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CHRISTIAN FACTS AND FORCES 



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CHRISTIAN 



FACTS AND FORCES 



NEWMAN SMYTH 

AUTHOR OF "old FAITHS IN NEW LIGHT," "THE REALITY OF 
FAITH," ETC. 



" Who climbs Jcee^s one foot firm on fad 
Ere hazarding the next ste/>.'* — Browning. 



^^ OF CO/Vrf; 

^' Sb>29]807 ^ 

NEW YORK -,..Of:.,VAo.H^v". /^ 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1887 






COPYRIGHT, 18S7, BY 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



WM, F. FELL Jt CO. w 

PHILADELPHIA W 



^V 



TO CENTER CHURCH 

GATHERED, WITH ONE EXCEPTION, FEOM MY LAST YEAR'S MINISTRY, 
IS NOW PRESENTED AS A THANKOFFERING, 

AND DEDICATED 

2!;0 tht p^m^yjj jaf Hat P^ttty <i^xm&^ 

WHOM I HAVE SEEN PASS FROM ITS COMMUNION, WHOSE DEAR LIVES 

HAVE BEEN THE EVIDENCE OF THOSE VITAL CHRISTIAN 

FAITHS WHICH I WOULD CONFESS IN ITS 

HISTORIC rULPIT. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

The Changed World, 1 

11. 
The Honesty of Jesus, 14 

III. 
Standing in the Truth, 26 

IV. 
The Positiveness of Jesus, 38 

V. 
The Beginnings of Discipleship, 51 

VI. 
Signs of the Times, 62 

VII. 
The Note of Universality, 7t> 

vii 



viii Contents. 

Zebedee's Absence, 92 

IX. 
The Christian Revelation of Life, 105 

X. 

Eeconciliation with Life, 117 

XI. 

The Gloeification of Life, 130 

XII. 
A Real Sense of Sin. — A Lenten Sebmon, 144 

XIII. 
Personal Power, 157 

XIV. 
The Great Requirement, 170 

XV. 

Misunderstanding Christ, 184 

XVI. 
Putting the Witness Away, 197 

XVII. 
A Study for a Doctrine of the Atonement, .... 210 



Contents, ix 

XVIII. „ , ^ ^ 

PAGE 

The Gospel a Gift to the Senses, 225 

XIX. 

The Limits of Spiritual Manifestation, 240 

XX. 

The Interdependence of All Saints, 254 



CHRISTIAN FACTS AND FORCES. 



I. 

THE CHANGED WOKLD. 

^* %nis t%t 5f)tpSjerIifS rjeturmlJ, Slorifsiit^ aitJr praising (Kotj for all ti&e 
ftiTtjgs tjat t!)£2 talJ f)iear]tr artlr sxm, jeitn ajsf it ^ks spoken unto tf)tm." — 
Luke ii. 20. 

The shepherds returned to their customary work in 
the morning, or some time during the day, after Christ 
had been born in Bethlehem. And in the course of 
that day after the nativity, the shepherds^ story was 
made known abroad, and " all they that heard it 
wondered at those things which were told them by 
the shepherds.'' 

The day after the hour of Christ's advent was a 
new day in the history of the world. It was not the 
same world the day after Christmas that it had 
been the day before. Something liad happened, tliat 
holy night at Bethlehem, while men were sleeping, 
and only a few shepherds were watching, which 
ushered in a new era in the history of the world. 
Tlie old })assed away, the new era bc^gnn, and only 
the angels knew what a revolution luul been wrought 
by tlie quiet power of Cod. Tlie wonder of that day 

1 



Christian Facts and Forces. 



after the Advent has grown with the years. Chris- 
tianity has been an increasing miracle of the Lord's 
presence on earth. That song which a few shepherds 
heard, has sung itself into the thought of the world, 
and is the key-note and harmony of all peace and 
good-will on earth. 

Let us think what a changed world it has become 
because Jesus was born at Bethlehem. 

Remember, first, that the Christian change of the 
world's history is a fact. It has been accomplished. 
The shepherds came to Bethlehem, and returned to 
their flocks, and everything went on with them as 
before; but in those still hours between two days 
some unseen Power had descended, and quietly 
altered the whole course of human history. Each 
succeeding age increases the effect of that holy hour 
at Bethlehem. The life which then came into our 
humanity has been cumulative in its power. 

When we speak with men about believing, they 
will sometimes say, ^^ AVe cannot walk in the air. 
We must step to our conclusions upon solid facts. 
These Christian prospects are devoutly to be desired; 
but we can go no farther than we can find firm foot- 
ing from fact to fact of experience." Here, then, is 
something for us to stand upon which is not as a cloud 
in the air, but which is a fact of the earth. The 
world has been changed by that life which was 
begun in the manger. This changed world is a fact. 
The new Christian evolution of humanity is a fact. 
The influx through Christ of a new power into 
the life of humanity is a known fact of experience, 
as certain as the fact of the battle of Gettysburg, or 
the island bf St. Helena, or the dawn of day. I may 



The Changed World. 



shut my eyes to it, and say, if I wish, " It is nothing 
to me." But the fact remains that this world was 
one thing the day before Christmas, and that it was 
a different world, with a new life in its heart, and 
a new creative power in its civilization, after Christ 
had been born in Bethlehem. 

This fact of the new power in the world through 
the birth of Christ, we can see, also, belongs to a 
series or connection of facts. The religion of the 
Bible presents a continued succession and reveals an 
exalted order of facts. It is a history of redemption 
which confronts us. Christianity is a positive re- 
ligion of historical facts from Moses to Christ, from 
Christ to the last church which has been organized, 
and the last communion-table which has been spread. 
We may say that we do not understand these events ; 
or we may seek to stretch the laws of nature suffi- 
ciently to comprehend these Christian results within 
the network of physical causes; but, however we 
may learn to account for them, these effects of Christ 
upon the world, we must observe, are facts, and con- 
stitute an order of facts. In approaching the claims 
of Jesus Christ upon us we have to do not with a 
vague philosophy, or a pleasant hope, or some happy 
dream, but with spiritual facts; and with f\icts, too, 
which are become so concrete in the institutions of 
society, and which are so present and vital in our 
whole civilization, that it is utterly unscientific and 
wholly unbecoming a logical mind not to take tliem 
into consideration, and to reason from tlicm as facts 
with at least as much assurance as we fool iu deal- 
ing with any other class and succession of facts. 
The fact that Jesus was born, and tluit his Spirit has 



Christian Facts and Forces. 



changed the world, and is changing it, is a simple, 
undeniable fact to which every reasonable mind 
should adjust its working-theory of life. 

Let us proceed then to inquire, secondly, concern- 
ing the nature and real significance of this fact that 
the world has been changed since the advent of 
Christ. 

In Christianity we breathe a different air. We live 
in a new order of society. Midway down the Simplon 
pass the traveller pauses to read upon a stone by the 
wayside the single word, " ItaliaP The Alpine pines 
cling to the mountain sides between whose steeps 
the rough way winds. The snows cover the peaks, 
and the brooks are frozen to the precipices. The 
traveller wraps his cloak about him against the frost 
that reigns undisputed upon those ancient thrones 
of ice-bound rock. But at the point where that stone 
with the word Italia stands, he passes a boundary- 
line. From there the way begins into another world. 
Soon every step makes plainer how great has been 
the change from Switzerland to Italy. The brooks, 
unbound, leap laughing over the cliflfe. The snows 
have melted from the path. The air grows warm 
and fragrant. The regiments of hardy pine no longer 
struggle in broken lines up the mountain side. The 
leaves of the olive trees glisten in the sunshine. 
The vines follow the wayside. The sky seems near 
and kind. And below, embosomed in verdure. Lake 
Maggiore expands before him. As he rests at even- 
ing time he knows that the entrance into a new 
world was marked by the word Italia upon that 
stone at the summit of the pass. Humanity has 
crossed a boundary -line between two eras. Up to 



The Changed World, 



Bethlehem was one way, growing bleaker, and more 
barren, and colder, as m.an hastened on. Down from 
Bethlehem has been another and a happier time. 
The one civilization was as Switzerland shut in 
among its icy Alps ; the other is as Lombardy's fruit- 
ful plain. The one led up to Stoicism; the other 
opens into charity. Judaism, also, and the Gospel 
are as two different climes. We need deny no pagan 
virtue, we need exaggerate no pagan vice, in order 
to bring out the greatness of the change which be- 
gan at Bethlehem. For it is not simply a difference 
in men, or in civilizations which we have to observe, 
great as, without historical exaggeration, that may be 
shown to be ; but the advent of Christ marks a differ- 
ence in motives, and in the motive-powers, which 
make human life, and which are creative of civiliza- 
tions. It was the coming of a new power to change 
the world. The impulse which was imparted to 
humanity by the presence among men of Jesus 
Christ can be compared to nothing less potential thxin 
the impulse which was given, we may suppose, to the 
creation when motion first became a fact and law of 
primeval matter. And from the advent of motion 
dates the order of the worlds. 

What was this new power which came into this 
world to bring to pass a new era ? To tlie disciples 
it was Jesus himself. He was the new Power that 
made all things new to them. At tliis distance, and 
in our familiarity with the completed Gospel, we 
can hardly understand in wliat a wonder of life the 
disciples dwelt in the presence of Christ. Tlie Gos- 
pels make little note of tlic feelings of the disciples, 
yet over and over again the expression of their wonder 



Christian Facts and Forces, 



occurs : " They were exceedingly amazed ;'' " They 
were astonished with a great astonishment f " And 
Jesus was going before them : and they were amazed." 
There are many questions which we think we would 
at once want to ask of Christ now, should he appear 
once more among us as of old, — questions of our 
hearts about the future, concerning the unseen world, 
and what death really is, and what those many 
mansions are like, and how there our dear ones are ; 
and we have an immense curiosity sometimes to go 
ourselves straight beyond death, to lift the veil, and 
to know the great reality, what it is, which we must 
believe lies just beyond our sight and touch, the First 
and Last, the final Truth of things. But the disci- 
ples, when Jesus was present with them, seem not 
to have pressed these questions upon him, but to have 
followed him wondering in the way ; and quietly, 
surely, even as the coming of the dawn changes the 
whole face of nature, Jesus' presence changed the world 
to the disciples' eyes, and with his glory in it, never 
could it become again the hopeless world that it had 
been in the days before Christmas morn. The men 
who had been with Jesus did not live any longer in 
the Judea of the Israelites, nor did they know longer 
the Samaria of the Samaritans. Galilee's lake had 
seen the Son of God walking upon its waves, and 
the risen Lord had appeared upon its shore. It was 
not, it could not be, the same world after they had 
once seen Christ in it. If we could put side by side, 
and print in parallel columns the thoughts, and 
wishes, and purposes, of Peter or John, when as 
young men they went fishing on Galilee, and the 
thoughts of life and death, of heaven and of God, 



The Changed World, 



which St. Peter knew on his way to martyrdom, and 
St. John received on the island of Patmos, we should 
have before us in those parallel columns the evidence 
of as signal a miracle as has been recorded in the 
Gospels — a greater wonder than the change of water 
into w^ine, a sign more significant of divinity than 
the physical manifestations and incidents of the new 
power of God in Christ on earth ; for it would be the 
evidence of a mental and moral revolution, of a 
re-creation of character and a new birth of souls — a 
marvellous work in the moral sphere revealing the 
coming of a higher spiritual Power, and the unusual 
presence of God with man. One cause, and one 
cause only, measures the vastness of that change in 
the mental and moral realm : " We beheld his glory, 
the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full 
of grace and truth.'' 

There are two particulars in which we may de- 
scribe further this change as it lies before us, an 
actual thing, in history. 

First, Jesus has been to the world a new revelation 
of God. Man has seen God in Christ as man never 
saw God before. It is fashionable for intellectual 
men, or rather, I should say- — for the fasliion of this 
world's thought changes — a few years ago it used to 
be in good intellectual form for men to say, " We may 
believe that God exists, but w^e cannot know any- 
thing of God." That passing fashion of thought, 
however, was fatally illogical, because the very words 
which were in vogue in some quarters about God, 
such as. He is tlio unknown and unknowable 
Power, really affirmed somctliing, of which we have 
some latent idea, about the unknown God. And we 



8 Christian Facts and Forces. 

may have real, though finite knowledge of infinite 
things. I can know what light is by a single ray in 
my eye, although I cannot contain in my eye the 
infinite flood of light which fills all space. And I 
may know God by a single beam of truth in my 
soul, although I cannot know God in his infinitude 
of being. To us men who are capable, then, of re- 
ceiving truth from God because we are made in the 
image of God, Jesus Christ brought a new revelation 
of the essential and eternal character of God. And 
what was that revelation ? Not an image of deity 
for the Holy Place of the Temple, in which was no 
likeness of God. Not a map of the divine attributes, 
such as are found in the books of the schoolmen. 
Not a form of God which we may look upon and 
worship as a picture of divinity in our imaginations. 
Jesus is never depicted pointing his disciples to the 
sky, as we do, when we say to our children, God is 
there. Heaven is up above. You cannot find in 
the teaching of Jesus one word about God's nature 
which is addressed to these bodily senses. But when 
Philip said, ^^ Show us the Father," — poor bewildered 
disciple, finding the truth he had been learning too 
great for him, and thinking, If I could only know 
the Father, if I could only see God as I see man, — 
then Jesus said, " Have I been so long time with 
you, and dost thou not know me, Philip ? he that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father." That was his 
revelation, his new, world-changing revelation of 
God. Himself, his Person, his character, his con- 
duct — you know that ; such is God. The one word 
which declares God is Christ. Christlikeness is what 
God is. God is essentially and eternally Christlike. 



The Changed World. 



And is not that a new revelation of God ? It is new 
still, even to some of us, for we have hardly dared, 
even in our churches, always to think of God as 
Christlike. It is sometimes new theology for us to 
think clearly, boldly, gloriously of God as Christlike. 
We receive that clear, white light from the charac- 
ter of God, and break it into partial colors upon the 
surfaces of our troubled thoughts. We do not often 
enough let the simple truth that God is Christlike fall 
full upon us, and illumine the depths of our souls. 
We think of God as the Almighty One enthroned 
above the world ; we reason anxiously concerning 
his government and his decrees; we receive the 
Roman image of an august Caesar, and in that im- 
perial mould suffer our idea of Divine sovereignty 
to take form, when the Gospels present Jesus 
Christ to us as the express image of God's person. 
We take texts of Scripture in hard literalness, and 
draw rigid conclusions about God's eternal purposes, 
which fall like blows upon tender consciences ; men 
speak with cool confidence about God's dealings 
with dead heathen, as though one day of nature were 
enough for the God of grace to give to them, and 
the Christ, who shall have been preached to every 
creature, will not sit upon the final judgment- 
throne; and zealous audiences applaud as though 
the faith were defended ; and all the while there is 
the Lord Christ of the Scriptures watcliing us, bear- 
ing with our cruel misunderstandings of liis Fatlier 
and ours, and waiting for us to come as little 
children to learn of him, that he may show us the 
Father, and give us such loyal confidence in him, 
that when wo cannot understand his judgments, or 



lo Christian Facts and Forces. 

know the whole counsel of his will, we may refuse, 
with a great-hearted and noble faith, to think any 
thought of our God which may seem to cast a shadow 
upon the infinite Christlikeness of his nature. 
Martin Luther was a truer Christian and a braver 
defender of the faith when he exclaimed, with a 
grand impatience of the Papists who pressed him 
with proof-texts from the Bible, ^^ I confide in Christ, 
who is true Lord and Emperor of the Scriptures." 

This knowledge of God in Christ, albeit we have 
not yet begun to receive it as we may, has proved 
itself to be a re-creative and reorganizing power 
among men. It is the most practical and potential 
influence in modern life. Nothing indeed can be 
more practical than a man's habitual thought of 
his God. A man's idea of his God is as practical 
as is the north star. Deception about the star 
means shipwreck upon the coast. And this revela- 
tion of God in Christianity has been the pole-star of 
modern history. This Christian revelation has been, 
and is now, the guiding principle, the dominant 
truth of human life. It were blindness not to see 
and to follow it. 

I can but glance now at the other aspect of 
Christ's new epoch to which I have just alluded. 

Secondly, Christ is also a new revelation of man. 
As man is discovered to us in Christ, he is found to 
be a new creature. Man is in Christ another man. 
It will make a vast difference with us whether we 
habitually look upon man as created in Christ, or 
without Christ. You go down the street, and pass 
some one who is only to you another of the multi- 
tude of human beings of whom there seem some- 



The Changed World, 1 1 

times to be already many more than there is any 
use for on this earth. You do not know that man, 
and do not want to know him. He may be only 
some worthless creature who hives, with other misera- 
bles, in some tenement house which was built by 
the devil of greed, and has been rented to demons 
of vice and squalor. Only some Board of Health, 
or the police, have occasion to know the habitats of 
so much swarming and festering humanity ! Or the 
man you meet may be respectable and honest enough, 
for all you know, only he exists, and must live his 
life, whatever it may be, in some one of those worlds 
which lie below the one into which you were born, 
and, properly enough, his name is not to be found 
written in your book of life. 

You owe him, you will admit, "equal rights," 
" liberty to make contracts," a certain humanity, and, 
if he ever should happen to come to your church, a 
seat in somebody else's pew. Something like that, in 
spirit, was the old-world view of man before Christ- 
mas. That is the view of him which you might 
take had you not been baptized into the name of 
Christ, in whom our whole common humanity exists, 
redeemed and capable of a great salvation. When 
that view of a man as a mere man was generally 
taken in the days before Christmas, the sun looked 
down upon this earth and saw Caesar on his throne, 
and the slave at his oar in the galley ; the plunder 
of whole provinces grasped by the hand of power, and 
the Roman proletariat rotting in heaped-up Avorth- 
lessness ; sensuousness filling its poisoned cup full at 
Pompeii, while Vesuvius was gathering underground 
its judgment-flames; conjuring priests in the tern- 



12 Christian Facts and Forces, 

pies laughing behind the altars at their incanta- 
tions ; a few Stoics saying brave, impracticable 
things, and a whole Roman empire dissolving in the 
fervent heat of its passions and lusts. But what 
thought Jesus Christ of humanity as he came from 
the Father, and met that publican in Jericho ? As 
he went to God what said the Lord Jesus to that 
thief upon a cross ? As Jesus' revelation of God 
was vivifying, and is potential with blessing for the 
whole world, so also his revelation of man is wonder- 
fully ennobling and transfiguring. Jesus brought 
out, perfected, and showed in his own divine person, 
the true image of humanity. Man is made to be- 
come Christlike. Man may be saved to Christlike- 
ness. That commonplace man whom we do not 
know, that poor man whom we may help, is more to 
us than merely another human being ; he has part 
with us in the humanity of Jesus Christ. All men, 
all generations of men, all nations of men, are 
created in Christ, and belong to that one humanity 
which Jesus Christ has taken to himself, and whose 
sin he bore in his own body on the tree. And it 
makes a vast difference in our thought, and hope for 
men, whether we look upon men as crowding, 
millions upon millions of them, within this brief 
space of existence, and pushed on, generation after 
generation of them, into the dark abyss of death and 
oblivion, in which all is over ; or whether we look 
upon them all as the children of God, belonging to 
that humanity which was created in Christ, and 
which Christ has redeemed, and, as members of that 
humanity, having all around them its gracious possi- 
bility of eternal life for all who will. And as indi- 



The Changed World. 13 

viduals we have to take our place, and to help 
others find their place, in this saved humanity, this 
redeemed society of Jesus Christ. There can be no 
private salvation for us in Christ. There is no salva- 
tion for us as individuals except as we belong to the 
saved humanity which Jesus is redeeming. This is 
the larger human truth beneath the old, Catholic 
idea, that there is no salvation without the Church. 
This revelation also of man in Christ we are only 
beginning to understand ; but we may be sure that 
the coming great missionary epoch of the Church 
will be an era of faith moved, governed, and inspired 
by a broader, higher, more generous vision both 
of Christ's revelation of God, and his revelation of 
man, — the one a manifestation of God in his essen- 
tial and eternal Christlikeness, and the other a dis- 
covery of man in the Christlike possibilities of his 
being. 

But I must break off my sermon with the per- 
sonal question for each one of us : Am I living, by 
faith in the Son of God, in the changed world ? Is 
it in the history of my soul the day before, or the 
better day after Christmas ? 



n. 

THE HONESTY OF JESUS. 

" W^t hioxhs tjal I j^ptait unto sou, It^ art spirit, aitlJ i^t^ wet lift."— 
John vi. 63. 

I WISH to speak of a certain quality of the Gospel, 
of which, it seems to me, the Christian world is 
gaining a clearer and firmer perception. This 
peculiar quality of the Gospel I might define as 
the thorough honesty of the mind that was in Jesus 
toward the life of the world around him. The 
teaching of the new prophet from Galilee was 
honesty itself in comparison with the words of the 
scribes. And still among all the books that have 
been written, none has a ring so decidedly clear and 
genuine as the New Testament. What is there in 
the whole history of the world so honest as the 
Sermon on the Mount? Yet honesty is not the 
whole of this singular and significant quality of the 
life, teaching, and work of Jesus, which I am seeking 
to describe. For a man may be quite honest, and 
yet be greatly mistaken. A man may have an 
honest heart, and yet by accident of education, or 
by some perversion of disposition, hold his mind at 
anything but a right angle toward life ; so that in 
his oblique position toward things very distorted 
images of them may be reflected in his intellect, and 
the light which would shine straight into the depth 
of his soul may be mostly reflected and lost from his 
14 



The Honesty of Jesus. 1 5 

thoughts. It is a great thing to have a candid mind, 
one not obscured by the gathered dust of the years, 
nor broken by the violence of passion — to have and 
to keep among men a crystalline soul. But this is 
not enough. A diamond is dark in a dark place. 
The position of a mirror in the light, and the angle 
in which it is held toward the object which is to be 
seen in it, are quite as important as the clearness of 
the glass. We cannot hope to gain true representa- 
tions of life and death, and eternal verities, if we 
persist in holding ourselves at a wrong personal 
angle toward truths. It is precisely this quality, 
over and above common honesty, which attracts and 
commands us in the record of Jesus Christ. He 
seems, with instinctive and natural adjustment, al- 
ways to keep himself in a relation so true to men, 
women, and things, that in his thoughts and judg- 
ments all objects are represented in their simple 
reality, and we see them just as they are. Hence 
there is always an impression of reality in the words 
of Jesus. Not only are they clear, honest words, 
but they correspond to the truth of things. Jesus' 
mind mirrors reality. This quality of the Gospel 
might be called, accordingly, the realism of the 
Gospel. Yet this word also, as well as the word hon- 
esty, fails to bring out fully the truth of Christ and 
Christianity, which the Spirit is showing to us anew 
in these days. For not only do the narratives of 
the New Testament give us honest portraitures, and 
reproduce with vivid realistic touches the persons 
who come and go before Jesus, but also Christ's 
words seem always to reach straight down to the 
moral substance of things, and his judgments dis- 



1 6 Christian Facts and Forces. 

close the moral realities which lie beneath all the 
endless fictitiousness of human life. The moral 
reality of the universe seems ever to be coming to 
revelation in the teaching of Jesus. This quality, 
accordingly, of which I wish to speak, might be 
expressed, so far as a single phrase can denote it, 
by the words, the moral realism of Christ and 
Christianity. 

Let me proceed, first, to illustrate and to describe 
more particularly this preeminent characteristic of 
the Gospel. You must often have noticed, in reading 
the New Testament, how Jesus in his conversations 
with men quietly brushes aside their Jewish notions, 
or their personal deceptions and touches with his 
saving power the real lives of people. And when 
man or woman stood for a moment beneath Jesus' 
eye, always then the real self was revealed. Men 
could not help appearing before Jesus as they were. 
They might have hidden the true self from others, 
but Jesus saw it at a glance. They might have con- 
cealed for years the real self from themselves, as so 
many are doing in their comfortable, fictitious lives; 
but when Jesus came nigh them they began to feel 
as though the judgment day were at hand. Before 
Jesus, in one word, men and women became real. 
In his clear presence they knew themselves, and 
I were made known as they were. It was so that 
night in the quiet conversation upon the housetop 
beneath the stars, when a Master in Israel discovered 
that even he must be born again of the Spirit. So 
by Jacob's well at mid-day, a woman whom disciples 
looked upon only as a poor Samaritan, and who had 
sinned and suffered enough to make her life hardly 



The Honesty of yesus, 1 7 

worth living more, discovered that she too had a 
soul, was not a menial Samaritan, but a woman, who 
even at her weary task of filling her pitcher at the 
well might minister to the Lord Christ, and all the 
way as she came and went, in any place, might 
worship God in spirit and in truth. So the publican, 
as wretched an outcast as ever was seen loitering down 
by the water-side of a city, when the Lord's kind 
word came in its great surprise to him, discovered 
that he too was a man for all that, and he might 
hope to live as a son of God in the kingdom. So 
the Pharisee stands out in Christ's light, discovered 
in his blindness of soul and pious hatefulness of 
heart, judged for all time by Jesus' coming to him. 
And so also the disciples who followed the Master 
began to know themselves really and truthfully and 
hopefully, as they never had seen themselves before. 
Again, this same quality pervades the teaching of 
Jesus. Not only did the Master bring out what was 
real in men, but also his doctrine is characterized 
throughout by this same note o moral reality. In 
other words, there was never a conventional phrase 
used, never an unreal thing said by our Lord in his 
personal dealings with men and women. He gave 
to each soul the bread of life which it needed at the 
time he met it. Jesus Christ sought to make genuine 
men — men not sound in word merely, or in profes- 
sion and creed, but sound at heart — whole men before 
God. Consequently his words went to the moral core 
of their being. First, they were to become true men 
at heart. They must have the right will of life, even 
as he did the will of the Father. Jesus' word in 
every instance of his conversation with men and 

2 



1 8 Chris tiait Pacts a^id Forces, 

women goes straight to the moral heart of the char- 
acter. He will not accept any homage, he will not 
grant any prayer, he will not give his blessing to any 
disciple, until he is sure that the right will has been 
born of the Spirit in the inmost soul. That will to 
do the will of God is the essential faith to which 
Christ declares himself, and he made every work of 
healing dependent upon that morally real faith in 
him. We have read the Gospels to little purpose if 
we have not discovered this. AVe may study the 
doctrines of the church until we say we see, as the 
Pharisees did, and are willing, as they were, to con- 
tend for every iota of our traditions ; but we shall 
be blind to the light which lies upon every page of 
the Gospel, if we will not perceive that faith in Jesus 
Christ means moral truth and moral reality at the 
core of the character and in the substance of the 
conduct, and that only in thorough-going honesty 
and moral reality of life can we know the doctrine 
of the man who has told us the truth which he 
heard from God. 

I have just been remarking that Jesus in his con- 
versations with men brought their real dispositions 
to the light, and, moreover, that his teaching was 
intended to put men upon thoroughly honest, morally 
real courses of life. More than this should now be 
said of his teaching. His doctrine of God through- 
out has this same practical relation to human life. 
The doctrine of Jesus means real righteousness, real 
justice, real love, one and the same in God and man. 
The theology of Jesus is real theology. It is the 
bread of life. It is truth of heaven brought down 
to immediate human uses. It is truth of God, not 



The Honesty of Jesus, 1 9 

to be thought about merely, but to be done on earth. 
It is the truth of the kingdom of heaven put into 
parables, so that the people may take it home and live 
upon it. The Lord Jesus Christ did not come into 
this world to teach a comprehensive system of philos- 
ophy, a subtle science of nature, or some perfect 
scheme of divinity. He came to seek and to save 
that which is lost. He came to establish the king- 
dom of heaven on earth. His words are spirit and 
life. Such is the theology of Christ— a truth of God 
indeed, into which the thought of the ages may gaze 
wondering and worshipping — a glory and a mystery 
of Godliness which transcends our reason as the 
heaven is high above the earth — a theology for the 
intellect which will always yield new answers to old 
questions, and which no age can exhaust — a revela- 
tion of God having for our understandings authority 
as the truth ; — but first and chiefly the theology of 
Jesus Christ, in its whole scope of doctrine, and in 
all its revelation of heaven and hell, is a theology 
for the conduct of life, a teaching from God in which 
divine truths and spiritual energies are brought into 
vital contact with the real life of men and women 
and children. Jesus' doctrine was not indeed first a 
doctrine about God, but a fact of God with man and 
for man, even as Jesus himself was not first to his 
disciples an article in the creed of his church, but a 
Person real, glorious, transfigured, divine. The Life 
was the light of men ; the light came from the Life ; 
the doctrine of Jesus shone from the life and work 
of Jesus. That was real as God is real, real as lovo 
is real, real as a new inspiration of life is real, as a 
Cliristlikc s})irit is real, as the Power of CJod trans- 



20 Christian Facts and Forces, 

forming character is real in human history. And 
if we do not understand this, if the Lord Jesus Christ 
does not come to us in this moral reality of his 
character, convincing us of sin, with his eye search- 
ing what is true or false in us, and his divine man- 
hood commanding us to rise and walk in the power of 
God ; if we do not begin to realize down to the bot- 
tom of our souls that the doctrine of Christ means 
for you and me a real repentance and a real faith 
which shall eventually make us Christlike as he is 
Godlike, that we all may be made perfect in one, — 
then, if we will not so learn Christ, and have the 
Spirit of Christ, we are in danger of the judgment. 
If we are resting in any fictions and falsehoods either 
of empty religious profession or of devouring worldli- 
ness, it is true of us that we are making our beds in 
Hell ; and if any of us will go on in lives that are 
shams, and with souls that are frauds, we ought to 
be consumed at the last day by that Truth of God 
which is to everything false a consuming fire. This 
universe is honest from its foundation-stones up to 
the throne of God, who made it in truth; and there 
is no resting-place or final hope for a dishonest man 
in an honest universe. As we would escape loss of 
soul in lives that are foolish fictions or wicked lies, 
we need to go penitently, every one of us, to Him 
who is the most real man of history, the Man who 
tells us the truth which he heard from God ; we need 
to let him be Master and Lord to us, and before that 
commanding Character to be converted, to become 
as little children, and to take up our lives anew in 
his name. 

I have been speaking of the intense moral realism 



The Honesty of yesus. 2 1 

of Jesus' teaching. Yet one thing more must be 
said of it. Jesus not only came as the Teacher sent 
from God, but also put himself in the Father's place 
among men. He represented God on earth. And this 
representation of God in Christ was not something 
scenic, or forensic, or pictorial merely. Jesus realized 
on earth what God is in heaven. Jesus made real 
in his life and death, Jesus realized in time and 
space the whole eternal disposition and love of God 
toward the world. The Cross of Christ is not only 
the exhibition, it is the realization in the midst of 
human history of God's mind, and will, and heart, 
toward the sin of the world. 

This truth of Christ as the real presence and power 
of God in the life of the world, is visibly set before 
us in the one memorial which Jesus left of his death. 
He might have bequeathed, to be treasured from age 
to age with reverent care, a parchment-roll written 
with his last message and his name ; or he might 
have given a new table of commandments graven 
on stone. He might have left as his memorial an 
institute of government, or a form of worship, or a 
liturgy for humanity's prayer. But he gave as his 
memorial the broken bread and the fruit of the vine. 
This also is part of the moral realism of his Gospel. 
These are the true, vital emblems of what he has 
done for the life of the world ; these are signs and 
pledges of what Christ is in the cliaracters of men. 
The Lord's words are still startling in their intense 
literalism: " He that eateth my flesh, and drinkoth 
my blood." Can we not understand how he would 
show us that our religion must be a vital principle, 
that his words, which are spirit and life, must enter 



22 Christian Facts and Forces. 

into the substance and quality of our souls, as the 
bread we break becomes the life of the body ? 

Let me turn now, for a few moments, from this en- 
deavor to describe the thorough honesty, or moral 
realism of the Gospel, to some pertinent applications 
of this truth. If we can gain a more thoroughly 
real conception of what religion is, and what Christ 
is, we shall understand better how the Spirit of God 
is now moulding and developing the Christianity of 
the world. There are two facts which are forcing 
themselves upon our notice: first, ecclesiastical 
Christianity, and to some extent dogmatic Chris- 
tianity, have less influence among men now than 
they ever have had since Constantine proclaimed an 
empire to be Christian, or Augustine, and Calvin after 
him, built and closed the massive Latin theology. 
We may regret, or not, this fact ; but no one who 
knows men, and the movements of modern life, can 
ignore the evidence of it. The other present fact is, 
that never has a morally real Christianity, a Chris- 
tianity of real life, been more honored, more loved, 
more believed in among men. It would seem, there- 
fore, to require no prophet to predict that the Church 
of the future will not be altogether the Church of 
the past. Indeed, the way of the Spirit of the Lord 
since Christ ascended has never yet turned wholly 
back upon itself. It seems clear that the Church of 
the future is not to be a church of vested ecclesias- 
tical pretension, or of one-sided insistence upon some 
particular tenet ; still less the church of local exclu- 
siveness, provincial pride, or formal orthodoxism. 
The Christianity that is living and growing, the 
missionary Christianity which shall yet overcome the 



The Honesty of Jesus, 23 

evil of the world with its good, is real Christianity ; 
it is the Gospel of the Son of God in the hearts and 
the characters of men and women, preached through 
the conduct of life ; and the Church of the future 
will be the church in any town or neighborhood 
which shall show to the world the most of this real 
work of the Spirit of Christ among men. And if we 
have any doubts as to just what this real Gospel is, 
there is one sure way in which we can learn it. Take 
the New Testament, and learn of what spirit, and 
what manner of man, Jesus Christ was. Only re- 
member that to do this is no light thing. It means 
reading the Gospel of Jesus Christ with a willing 
mind. Have we will enough to take some single 
word of Jesus, and carry it with us in our hearts as 
a commandment through the livelong day ? Are we 
willing to seek what the Lord means, not in the dim 
religious light of our churchly habits, but out in the 
glare of our business ? Real Christianity means for 
us something very different, and much harder than 
coming to church, singing hymns or discussing 
doctrines. Real Christianity is not owning a pew in 
a church, and renting a building to the devil. Real 
Christianity is not contributing a farthing to missions, 
keeping a carriage, and paying fifty cents on a doUar. 
Real Christianity is not saying, "Lord, Lord," and 
leaving the mass of suffering humanity to take care 
of itself. Real Christianity is not building the 
sepulchres of the prophets, and guarding as sacred 
trusts the dead bones of the past, and being as fools 
and blind, when the Lord is i)assing by in the Spirit 
of an age, and calling the Church to greater works 
of faith, and larger visions of redemption. Real 



24 Christian Facts and Forces. 

Christianity is not professing to love the brethren, 
and indulging in suspicions and all uncharitable- 
ness. Real Christianity is not sitting in Moses' seat, 
and binding upon men heavy burdens, and grievous 
to be borne. Real Christianity is not — ^but we know 
too well these spurious, beggarly and hateful things 
which Christianity is not. What it is, something 
most human and divine, we see and own whenever 
a disciple shows Christ in some transfiguration of 
character to us. It is Christ — Christ loved, chosen, 
obeyed, as Master and Lord. It means for you and 
me, not only following Jesus in grateful memory 
along his way of mercy through Galilee and Judea, 
but following him in glad service up and down these 
streets. 

There are some men among us who believe so far 
as they think they can, but who do not profess to be- 
lieve so many things about Christ as church-mem- 
bers usually do. AVe think that, for your full salva- 
tion, for your moral growth, poise of character, and 
your refuge from the mystery of trouble and death 
which surrounds us all, it would be far better if you 
could believe more of the truth which we have found 
in Christ than you have yet seen your way clear to 
confess. But we would not forget, we would have 
you remember, that. Jesus, even while teaching men 
of God, fixed his ( j upon the heart. "While finish- 
ing his work of atonement, by which all may be 
saved, he asked of men the right heart before God. 

We wish, indeed, that all kind and reverent men, 
w^ith whom, in many ways, we work in the same Chris- 
tian work of overcoming the evil of the world, and 
making this life purer and richer, might come with 



The Honesty of yesus, 25 

us, and in humble and most reasonable confession of 
the divine facts of the Gospel, sit down together with 
us at the table of the Lord of all. 

But as ministers of the one perfectly honest Man 
of history, whose words are spirit and life, w^e have 
always a Gospel to preach to the hearts of men which 
is simple as it is real. The King shall say, " Ye did 
it unto me," or " Ye did it not unto me." The 
Christ has said, " If a man love me, he will keep my 
word ; " and, " Herein is my Father glorified, that ye 
bear much fruit; and so shall ye be my disci- 
ples." Surely he wants of you and me a real re- 
pentance, and a real faith, and such knowledge of 
God's doctrine as may come to the servant who does 
the will of God. 

Are we willing, then, to receive Christ as we find 
him in these Gospels, and to let him be the Master 
of our business, the Friend of our happiness, the 
Lord of our homes, the Shepherd of our thoughts, 
the Light of our hearts ? 



III. 

STANDING IN THE TRUTH. 

** ^t teas a miirtetr from t^t lt%[nnin%, mti JEftooir not in ^t tcutj, 
itcaujjje i\tu iz no trulf) in i^im.''— John viii. 44. 

I TOOK occasion last Sunday to speak of the thorough 
honesty of the mind that was in Jesus toward the 
Hfe of the world. I sought to describe a striking 
characteristic of the Gospel, which may be called its 
moral realism. I shall endeavor again and again 
to put before you this characteristic of the Gospel, 
and to bring our beliefs and habits to the light of 
this real theology of the one honest Man of history, 
who told the truth which he heard from the Father. 
For surely no theology, old or new, is worth preach- 
ing to men, if it be not a real theology, seeking 
always to discover the real thing in religious ex- 
perience, and in the history of divine revelation. 
And the desire for more simple and honest reality 
in living and in thinking is one of the clearest notes 
of the Spirit in present Christianity. Along this 
line of a more real Christian living and thinking 
further progress is to be made in the knowledge of 
God, and in the spread of the Gospel through the 
world. 

The chapter from which our text comes this morn- 
ing shows Jesus' wonderful power of bringing men 
out of their fictions of life, and leaving them as though 
judged by God himself. The Lord's words with 

26 



Standing in the Truth. 27 

the chief representatives of religion in Jerusalem 
revealed the moral core and substance of things. 
Our text illustrates Jesus' habit of discovering 
the essential thing in life. It touches just that 
vital point which in our exhortations concerning 
standing in the truth, and defending the faith, we 
are apt not to see or to care for. His word was, 
" He stood not in the truth, because there is no truth 
in him.'' The text discloses the condition under 
which it is possible for a created being to stand in 
the truth. It shows how a stand in the truth is to 
be taken. It is no little thing, no easy task of a 
moment, to stand in the truth. It were a great and 
happy thing for a finite mind to stand confident and 
serene, like a son of God, in the truth. You may 
have stood some rare evening upon a mountain-top. 
The veil of mists had been lifted from the valleys ; 
the highways, the villages, the rivers' course were 
etched upon the map of earth that lay beneath you ; 
on the far horizon the sea and sky met in one 
lustrous line; the few lingering clouds showed to 
your eye, as you stood on that height, their upper 
edges turned to gold, while the whole air, under the 
great dome of heaven, seemed to have become one 
clear crystal to let the light shine through. So is it 
to stand in the truth. It were worth the eff'ort of a 
life-time, if, after all toil and climbing, we could stand 
bright-souled and exultant in the truth. So without 
life-long toil and climbing, every hour, Jesus stood 
in the truth. 

You perceive thus that much more should be 
meant than is often suggested to us by the common 
exhortations, "Stand fast in the truth," "Stand lh*in, 



28 Christian Facts and Forces. 

holding the faith once dehvered to the saints." Men 
may only mean by that, stand with us, or as our 
fathers stood. Be obstinate on our side. Or they may 
be thinking simply of standing steadfastly in some 
limited conception of truth, and not of standing 
Christlike in some large, luminous sense of God. 
Or we may urge one another to stand in the truth, 
as though all that is required of us were to stand 
where we are, and in what we have been taught, 
without once inquiring how a finite mind is to find 
its place sure, serene, sunny, in the truth. And 
particularly when men are debating about great 
themes, or contending against what seem to them 
grievous errors, the call to stand in the truth may 
sound like a fierce battle-call, and in bitter contro- 
versy for some truth men may even lose their per- 
sonal abiding in all truth. 

In this one short text Jesus puts before us the 
real thing to be desired in our anxiety to stand in 
the truth. And like all other real things of worth 
to us, this object to be desired pertains to a man's 
character. The truth must be in us, or we cannot 
abide in the truth. Jesus' word was, '^ He stood not 
in the truth, because there is no truth in him." 
Having no truthfulness within, the Evil One lost 
his standing in the truth of God's universe without 
him. He had fallen from the truth because there 
was no truthfulness within him. 

This extremest case of Satanic falling from thq 
truth illustrates the whole process of descent of soul 
from the truth. According to this word of Jesus, 
we may take it as general law, that a mortal being 
must himself be truthful in order to maintain his 



Standing in the Truth. 29 

standing in the truth of things. A man cannot 
know the truth of nature if he cherishes a lie in his 
heart. The soul must itself be truthful to see the 
truth. When we exhort men, therefore, to stand 
fast in the faith, we need, if we would follow Christ's 
example, to look to it first and last that we and they 
are in our spirits of the truth. If not, we shall not 
find, by all our logic, sure, sunny standing -place in 
the truth. 

I wish further to illustrate and to enforce what 
seems to be the simple and universal law of knowing 
the truth according to this deeply suggestive word 
of the Lord Jesus. We will begin with some of the 
more obvious examples of it. 

First, this universe is a moral universe, and a man 
to stand in it must himself be morally sound. An 
immoral man can have no permanent standing- 
ground in a moral universe. I say the universe is 
moral, and I mean there is no untruthfulness, or 
dishonesty, or hypocrisy, or favor of vice, or shelter 
for falsehood of any kind, in the constitution and 
nature of things. Nature invariably gives the same 
answer, under the same circumstances, to chemist or 
physicist. The laws of things know no crooked- 
ness. The creation was made in truth, and con- 
tinues in truth. The ocean-tides keep true time and 
measure; the sun is steadfast in its course; the atoms 
of matter are always the same definite regularities, 
and the stars are honest. Nature throughout is one 
piece of honest work. This veracity of nature lies 
at the foundation of our industries. Every raih'oad 
is built upon it; every revolving wheel of our facto- 
ries is centered upon this infrustrable truth of things; 



30 Christian Facts and Forces, 

every man going forth to his labor under the sun 
works in faith that the earth and sky will keep their 
primal covenant, and all earthly happiness is nature's 
plighted troth kept to all living creatures, and the 
heart of man. 

Now, then, when a man who is born to stand in a 
truthful universe takes up some lie into his soul, 
what happens ? What must happen but that fate 
which befell the Father of lies ? He cannot stand 
in the truth because the truth is not in him. Sup- 
pose a man conceives a fraudulent thought, and says, 
I will go about my business, and succeed with that 
fraud in my mind. What is the end ? Defaulters 
behind prison bars might answer. They did not 
stand in the truth because they first turned false to 
themselves. It may have been a little falsehood at 
the start. Defalcations always begin in a man him- 
self before, and sometimes months and years before, 
they begin in the office or the bank. The real begin- 
ning was not even when the first temptation to use 
others' money wrongfully may have presented itself 
It was before that; the fall began far back of that in 
the man himself, when he let some falsehood come 
into his life ; when he seemed to be more than he 
was ; when he sought to keep up an appearance which 
was not true ; when he let any untruth, whatever it 
may have been, take possession of his desire of life. 
And at last men were shocked to discover that he 
stood not in the truth because the truth was not in 
him. 

Perhaps, however, the end has not come yet, and 
men who are not truthful within seem still to stand 
as though the universe were in their favor, and 



Standing in the Truth. 31 

nature's honesty not set against them. It is no new 
thing to see the wicked prosper. 

Nevertheless, the universe is a moral universe, and 
its forces are honest forces. Soon or late, in this 
world or another, the end of inward untruthfulness 
is certain as the law of gravitation. The moral uni- 
verse can be relied upon eventually to throw out 
every immoral man. Without are the idolaters, and 
every one that loveth and maketh a lie. It would 
be necessary for moral infidels to do something more 
than to shut up the pulpits, close the Bible, and 
laugh at heaven and hell, in order to prevent the 
final judgment of a universe which was created in 
truth, and which keeps the truth to every man born 
into it. And we do not have to look on to the last 
day to discover how this law is working. Men, on 
account of their falsehoods in themselves, are being 
cast out by the truth of things. You can see it every 
day in business. The laws of wealth are more than 
laws of economics. They are laws also of success in 
a moral world which throws out dishonesty. A man 
cannot stand long in the world's credit, if the truth 
of personal integrity is not in him. You can watch 
the same moral judgment going on in society. A 
rich or popular man cannot stand always in good 
society if his heart is becoming rotten. IIo may be 
allowed to stand there too long, but in the end 
society must cast him out. And even in politics tlio 
moral constitution of the world is sure uUimately 
to prove itself stronger tlian tlio passions of men. 
Many a po})ular leader lias not stood in the truth of 
the people's final judgment because tlio truth was 
not in huu. Tlie most fatal thing for any ambitious 



Christia7t Facts a7id Forces, 



young man is to let his soul hold companionship 
with any lie. 

This same condition of standing in the truth per- 
tains, also, to work in the realm of science, where we 
might suppose that purely intellectual perception of 
truth would have no dependence u^^on morals. Yet 
nature wants character in her pupil even when 
teaching her laws of numbers. Clerk Maxwell's 
character was a part of his fitness for his high scien- 
tific work. So intimate is the connection between 
inward truthfulness and the power to perceive the 
truth of things, that personal honesty becomes essen- 
tial part of preparation and fitness for the finest and 
best scientific work. And certainly this same law 
which Jesus taught has been confirmed over and 
over again in the history of literature. ^Tiat a poet 
for the coming years Byron might have been, had 
there been in him higher and holier truth ! Xature 
will own and echo long no poet's song whose soul is 
not true to her divine order, and whose heart is not 
pure as her skies. 

Secondly, the universe is a divine universe, and 
no man can stand in its truth who wishes to say in 
his heart, "There is no God." There is a diviner 
presence in this visible creation than is seen. There 
is some divine reality behind all these shifting 
appearances of things. There is some secret of 
divinity hidden in nature's heart. There is an ex- 
pression of divine intelligence playing over the face 
of nature. God is nearer us than we know in this 
infinite mystery of life and death. And what is seen 
and touched is not the half of the glory of this king- 
dom of God. Faith is standing in this diviner glory 



Standing in the Truth, 33 

of things. So the truths of the unseen world were 
real as the hill-tops of Galilee to the man of Naza- 
reth. God, the Father, was near as the human heart 
to the Son of man. 

We, all of us, would like to stand with more vivid 
sense, and with calmer pulses, in this divine truth 
which we must believe is the all-encompassing and 
final truth of the creation. But we cannot do this 
if the truth is not in us. St. John wrote — and the 
same moral realism which pervaded Jesus' teaching 
pervades the disciple's words : " If a man say, I love 
God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar : for he that 
loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot 
love God whom he hath not seen.'' Very plain, and 
homelike theology is that doctrine which the beloved 
disciple learned from the loving Master, and common 
people can understand it. A man is not standing in 
the truth of God if he is bearing a grudge in his 
heart, or if he is seeking to pull himself up by put- 
ting another man down, to grow rich by making 
every one with whom he does business poorer. We 
cannot stand clear-eyed, confident, and illumined 
souls in the truth of God, if we are false in thought, 
word, or desire, toward any man, woman, or child on 
God's earth. When a person is thinking a hateful 
thought he does not believe then in God. There is 
no God in his heart at that moment. Though ho 
should be making an argument to prove that there 
is a God, no man with an undivine thought in his 
heart could believe in God. lie is living in tliat 
thought or passion in a Godless universe. lie is an 
atheist in his own soul, denying the very essence and 
glory of God, though ho bo saying, " Lord ! Lord 1 " 



34 Christian Facts and Forces. 

And it is of no avail for any man of us to try to 
believe in God or immortality, or the whole unseen 
universe, simply by thinking about them, or discus- 
sing the natural probabilities for these beliefs, unless 
we are first willing and eager to have some truth of 
God in ourselves, living and pulsating in the heart 
of our life, and so by the truth within us finding 
that we stand in the divine truth of the world. If 
any man of you, on the contrary, becomes so absorbed 
in your aff*airs and ambitions that you can think of 
your business, and little else, all the seven days of 
the week, and even your wife, and the children God 
has given you, become in your self-absorption as 
unreal and almost as unknown to you as angels are, 
and you choose purposely to live in that rush of 
worldliness, from lust of gain, and not from absolute 
compulsion for the sake of others, then you cannot 
expect to have any real assurance of your Father in 
Heaven, or of your own immortality, for the truth 
of home is not in your own soul. Always the truth 
must be in us before we can stand in it, — the truth 
of love, of fatherhood, of humanity, the truth of 
home, and friendship, and high purposes worthy of 
immortality, before we can stand in the truth of God, 
and the heavenly home, and the life eternal. Live 
like a brute, and believe like a son of God ? No, 
never ! We cannot do that, for the universe is truth- 
ful as well as divine, and there must be truth within 
answering to the truth of God without, and every 
falsehood in the heart is a blind spot, and every sin 
in the soul is a dead nerve, to the light and the love 
in which Jesus lived on this earth every day as 
though he were in heaven. Does any man among 



Standing in the Truth. 35 

you want us to prove the existence of God to him ? 
We will not take with us our books of divinity ; we 
will go and search your book of life, and see if we 
can find any evidence of God there. And if we 
should find that yesterday or to-day you put down 
your own desires, and went and did some truth of 
God ; if you, strong man, in your haste, stopped a 
moment to make that little child happy, or were not 
ashamed to espouse the cause of that poor man who 
came to you for righteous help, or if you resisted 
manfully the devil when he offered to give to you, 
or your corporation, some kingdom of this world for 
your compliance with his last fraud, or if you strove 
even at cost to yourself to see some just thing done 
on this earth, or in genuine repentance you sought 
to undo some wrong which you have learned your 
sin has done, then by these signs and evidences of 
truth in your book of life, we will bid you find God 
and worship him ; for justice and charity, and fair 
dealing, and all virtue are essentially divine, and by 
these things within our hearts we may know the 
good God above us and all around us, whom having 
not seen we love. 

And then, if we have aught of divine truth in us, 
we may turn to the evidences of God in the workl 
and begin to appreciate them ; we may reason of the 
Creator to some purpose from the regularities, like 
manufactured articles, of the atoms, or from tlio 
manifest providence of our human history, or from 
the ideas wliich are the sacred trusts of the soul of 
man. 

Finally, tliis universe is a Cliristian univorso, and 
if a man lias not the Spirit of Christ he cannot stand 



36 Christian Facts and Forces. 

in the full, final Christianity of the universe. The 
Scriptures plainly teach that all things were made 
by Christ, and that in him all things consist. He 
is the Head of the creation. The incarnation — the 
personal descent of the Creator, and His union with 
His moral creation — is not for this little world only, 
nor for the brief period of our history, but for the 
whole creation and all the ages. The universe is 
Christian in the sense that it was created for Christ, 
and reaches its consummation in the Word made 
flesh. It is Christian in the sense that God has 
shown Himself to be Christian in His eternal thought 
and purpose toward the world. And it is Christian 
because its last, great day shall be the Christian 
judgment. We must all appear, not before the 
throne of Law, or to be judged by the light of nature 
only, but we must all appear before the judgment- 
seat of Christ. The universe is Christian, and all 
souls in it are to receive Christian judgment. 

Hence, if we would stand in this full and final 
truth of the universe, we must have some Christian 
truth in us which shall answer to the final, revealed 
and perfect Christian character of the universe 
around us. If we should fail of this, if we should 
fail of becoming Christian at heart, how could we 
hope to stand at last in the Christian universe? 
Whatever is not Christian must eventually be cast 
out as a dead and worthless thing. For Christ must 
reign until all enemies be put beneath his feet. Sin 
must go, and death must go, and all uncharitable- 
ness must go, and all deceit. For the Christian 
nature and character of the universe is to be re- 
vealed. " And I saw a new heaven and a new earth : 



Sta7iding in the Truth 37 

for the first heaven and the first earth are passed 
away; and the sea is no more." "And I heard a 
great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the 
tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell 
with them, and they shall be his peoples, and God 
himself shall be with them, and be their God." 
"Then cometh the end, when he shall deliver up 
the kingdom to God, even the Father." And God 
shall be all in all. 



IV 

THE P0SITIVENE8S OF JESUS. 
'*Tnil^, tetlj, I sas uitto 20^-"— John i. 51. 

This expression is one of the signs and evidences of 
the divine originality of Jesus Christ. In the brief 
reports which are given in the Gospels of the words of 
Jesus this phrase, " Verily I say unto you/' has been 
recorded by the evangelists more than seventy times. 
It evidently was a characteristic and habitual ex- 
pression of Jesus, which, in the disciples' memory of 
him, distinctly marked his conversation, and sepa- 
rated him from all other men. 

When we wish to explain any natural phenome- 
non, we proceed to classify it. We say it belongs to 
such an order of events; it is an instance of a 
general class of phenomena. But this "Verily, 
verily, I say unto you " of Jesus Christ refuses to be 
classified. It is an expression which stands by 
itself The positiveness of Jesus cannot easily be 
coordinated with any other known kinds of human 
positiveness. It was unique. 

There were in Jerusalem examples enough among 
the scribes and Pharisees of one kind of religious 
positiveness with which we are not unacquainted. 
The dogmatists we have always with us. The 
scribes, whether in theology or science, will open their 
books and say, " It is written," and that is the end of 
all controversy. The bigot will hold fast the letter 
38 



The Positiveness of yesus. 39 

of his creed, and cry aloud, " So we believe, and, 
without doubt, any one who does not believe as we 
do is beyond the pale of the true Church." Igno- 
rance will stand firm upon tradition, and swear to all 
passers-by, I know. In Jerusalem, and in all times 
and cities, there has lived the man who could not be 
mistaken. This spurious kind of positiveness is not 
unfamiliar nor unnatural. But we cannot read the 
Gospels without discerning at a glance, that the 
assurance of Jesus Christ was wholly contrary to the 
blind positiveness of the learned scribes and the 
dogged Pharisees. The common people, when they 
heard Jesus affirm, " Verily I say unto you," instantly 
recognized the fact that he spake not as the scribes. 
It was not the voice of the dogmatist which the peo- 
ple heard in the Sermon on the Mount. It is not an 
immense and superhuman, but deceived self-confi- 
dence which has confronted every generation since 
with the Verily, verily, of the doctrine of Jesus 
Christ. 

Neither was the positiveness of the Son of man 
like the positiveness of the prophets of old. We 
cannot possibly classify Jesus among the prophets of 
Israel. The nature of his assurance of God was differ- 
ent from the former prophetic confidence in the word 
of God. The prophet of old entered the city, passed 
through the people, and stood before the king with a 
" Thus saith the Lord " burning in his soul and 
leaping like flame from his lips. lie did not say, 
out of some indwelling consciousness of Jehovah, 
" Verily I say unto you." " The word of the Lord 
came to me," *' The burden of the valley of vision," 
— such was the prophet's manner of speech ; Jesus 



40 Christian Facts and Forces. 

alone said calmly, constantly, as one speaking 
directly out of his daily consciousness of divine life, 
and as though his word were enough, " Verily, verily, 
I say unto you." By this one characteristic the Son 
of man is separated from all the Hebrew prophets. 
Jesus never had been taught those words of imme- 
diate authority in any school of the prophets. 
Where did he learn them ? Whence came to him 
this habitual expression of his personal, spiritual 
supremacy ? 

The positiveness of the Son of man was not in any 
manner like the confidence of the philosopher in his 
reasonings, or of the student of nature in the verifi- 
cation of his results. Jesus' Verilies precede rather 
than conclude his teachings. He gave no demonstra- 
tions ; he collated no facts ; he wrought no experi- 
ments ; he carried his disciples through no prolonged 
processes of reasoning. Jesus Christ simply stood in 
the midst of men and said : " Verily, verily, I say 
unto you." If he worked miracles, it was not as a 
man would make experiments to verify for himself 
the truth ; Jesus condescended to give disciples signs 
of his glory, but for himself he could say, " I know 
the Father." 

Neither can Jesus' positiveness be classified with 
those rare religious faiths which his disciples may 
have attained in his name. For not only was Jesus' 
positiveness greater than the positiveness of any 
other man who has ever lived, but it has its distinc- 
tive quality, and, moreover, its birth and growth in 
his life cannot be traced, as we can follow the history 
of faith in the lives of his disciples. 

Faith is for us an achievement of life — often the 



The Positiveness of Jesus. 41 

last, as it is the noblest, achievement of a man's spirit. 
And we know how hard it has often been for us to 
believe. Our best faiths bear the marks of suffering 
upon them. We have been compelled to believe in 
order to live. There came a time when we said, 
Now I must believe, or I cannot live. There were 
moments when we might have perished had we 
looked down, and not up. We know, some of us, in 
what dear graves we have buried our doubts. We 
know out of what trials, and sorrows, and disap- 
pointments faith has been born of God in our hearts. 
Our faith is often the peace after the storm, the light 
that has quietly and surely dawned after hours of 
darkness, and long watching for the morning. And 
the Christ has come to us, and bidden us believe. 
But no Christ came to Jesus. He was the Christ to 
himself. There was none like him before him, no 
Master and Lord in whose discipleship he could see 
God revealed. He could go to no other for the words 
of eternal life. He was the first-born among many 
brethren. Jesus' faith was therefore original, and 
not derived — the witness of God which he had in 
himself, for there was no other who could be in God's 
place as the Christ to Christ. Hence, in this respect, 
also, the positiveness of Jesus was wliolly unlike tlie 
faith of disciples in him which most nearly resembles 
his positiveness. He was the first of men to say of 
all unseen and divine things, " I know — Verily I say 
unto you." 

In this i)ositiveness of Jesus there is to be dis- 
cerned no trace of our conflict, or doubt, our w (Airi- 
ness of soul, contradictions of spirit and body, and 
hard won victory perhai)s of the angels of light over 



Christia7i Facts and Forces. 



the demons of denial in us. Jesus seemed to believe 
spontaneously and directly out of his own conscious- 
ness of God. Other children becoming men grow 
into man's inheritance of ignorance and spiritual 
uncertainty ; the child Jesus grew as naturally into 
a divine Sonship and its assurance of God. This 
peculiar spiritual positiveness of Jesus marked his 
teaching from the beginning. It was in the answer 
which he gave the mother who found him teaching 
in the temple. We may know that narrative of the 
evangelist to be true to the reality, because no He- 
brew disciple could ever have imagined or invented a 
scene so unheard and undreamed of as the picture 
which Luke has drawn of the child teaching in the 
Temple. Jesus puts his " Verily I say unto you" 
before his exposition of the law of Moses. And every 
verse of the Sermon on the Mount is firm teaching. 
Each blessing is clear, sure truth of God. The Ser- 
mon on the Mount with its beatitudes shines by its 
own light, piercing the world's moral darkness, and 
positive as a constellation. And never, in all Jesus' 
conversation, was there to be detected a hesitating 
note. The doctrine of Jesus throughout was sure of 
itself The Gospel of Jesus is so much clear, sunny 
certainty. " Verily, verily, I say unto you," was his 
announcement of himself to Nathanael in the begin- 
ning of John's Gospel ; " Verily, verily, I say unto 
thee," — so the Lord makes known his personal word 
to Peter at the close of John's Gospel ; and in all the 
chapters between is heard the same voice of divine 
positiveness which never wavers, never trembles, 
never ceases to sound. 

The peculiar quality of Jesus' positiveness appears 



The Positiveness of yesus. 43 



still further when we reflect upon the subjects concern- 
ing which the Son of man was absolutely sure. They 
are the subjects of which other men are not sure. 
Jesus was most positive where we can be of our- 
selves least positive. He said, I know, where we can 
only say, I trust. His Verities do not precede asser- 
tions concerning natural truths which we can dis- 
cover or demonstrate. Jesus gave no positive teach- 
ing concerning matters of science. He did not put 
his verily before some announcement of astronomic 
laws or physical processes. Jesus left man to learn 
for himself, by ages of experiment, the arts of life. 
Neither did he put his " Verily I say unto you," be- 
fore statements concerning matters of history, which 
the scholars, by patient studies, may search out. He 
did not say. Verily, verily, concerning the authorship 
of any book of the Old Testament. He left all such 
questions to the critics. Upon many subjects for 
which our theologies grow most contentious, with 
regard to which sectaries become most confident, and 
over which denominations are formed, parties rallied, 
and churches even divided, the Christ of the Gospels 
seems silent. We cannot find any Verily, veril)^, of 
our Lord for such things as Sanhedrims determine, 
and bigots enforce. The cup of persecutions which 
the church has filled, and which the martyrs have 
emptied, so that only the bitter taste of the dregs of 
it is left upon our lips, was never the cup of tlio 
Christ which he would give to his disciples. Open 
the New Testament, and follow througli the Gospels 
for yourselves these Verilies of our Lord, and ob- 
serve carefully at what times Jesus stands boforo his 



44 Christiajz Facts and Forces, 

disciples, or among the people, in this supreme posi- 
tiveness of his knowledge. "Verily, verily, I say 
unto you," — the Lord is speaking of the new heart, 
the childlike spirit, and the true life into which 
man must be born again — the eternal life which he 
that believeth may have even here and now. He is 
speaking of prayer, and of God's listening to it; of 
faith, and its power of greater works ; of the disciple 
who is to be as the Master in the w^orld, and of the giv- 
ing a cup of water only in his name, and its reward. 
The Lord is speaking, when he says Verily, of the 
freedom of the son in the Father's house, and of the 
bondage of sin, the poor slave of which cannot abide 
in the house forever ; he is speaking of the possible 
forgiveness of all sins, save only the sin against the 
Holy Ghost — the soul's last, fatal rejection of God. 
When Jesus used this word of supreme personal 
authority, he was speaking of himself, of his power 
from the Father, of his place in our human history 
as the door and the way for all men into the heavenly 
fold ; of his consciousness of indwelling divinity, in 
which he could declare, " Before Abraham was, I 
am." The Lord with his Verily, verily, in the midst 
of his disciples, is speaking of his death, which must 
needs be for the life of the world, as the grain of wheat 
cannot bear fruit except it fall into the earth, and 
die. And once more, in that hushed upper chamber, 
w^here he had broken the bread and blessed the cup, 
solemn and low, and tender as with an infinite 
sorrow, yet clear and sure, and triumphal as though 
some eternal joy were sounding beneath all its 
sorrow, that divine voice is heard, saying, " Verily 



The Positiveness of Jesus, 45 

I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of 
the vine, until that day that I drink it new in the 
kingdom of God." 

Remembering these Verilies of our Lord, I would 
have you take notice, first, that over against all our 
human ignorance, sinfulness, and need, the Gospel 
is one grand affirmation of God. The doctrine of 
Jesus Christ is an assertion of those spiritual truths 
and those eternal realities of which we most need to 
be made sure. Oh, dear friends, if we take any of 
these questions of our lives which trouble us, and 
baffle us, and break our hearts, to Jesus Christ him- 
self, we can find for just these vital needs of our 
souls, some "Verily, verily" of our Lord. There 
are, indeed, silences in the Gospel, and great shadows 
left clinging close to its luminous truths ; revelation, 
like the starry sky, has vast vacancies unillumined 
between its points of lights. To our human curiosity, 
seeking to make God's pure will a visible, tangible 
thing on earth, instead of a living truth in the heart, 
no sign shall be given. But the Lord Christ dwells 
among men with some word of eternal life for all our 
vital human needs. Christ is present every day with 
his " Verily I say unto you," before your life and 
mine. 

I have seen strange providences during these past 
few years meeting the lives of some of you, for 
which I can find in all the books, and from all my 
teachers, no reason and no answer. I have seen joy 
coming, and joy going from your homes. I have 
seen those you loved — and they were not, for God look 
them. I have seen trials seemingly out of all \n'o- 
portion to need and character sent to sonic, and 



46 Christian Facts a7id Fo7^ces, 

others left with hardly a burden to try their strength. 
I have seen frail women compelled to bear the 
weight of heavy responsibilities which strong men 
could hardly carry. I have seen lives strangely 
crossed, and high hopes crushed to earth, and joy, 
after its first prophetic song in some heart, silenced, 
seemingly forever ; and I have seen also doors of life 
suddenly opening of themselves, where the world had 
seemed closed as fate against youth's utmost efibrt ; 
and, again, in some life which the storm had laid waste, 
I have looked and seen some flower of paradise bloom 
afresh, as from some seed dropped — God's spirit, 
which bloweth where it listeth, only knows from 
whence and how ; and I have learned, too, little by 
little, what conflicts and trials, and defeats and losses, 
lie beneath the peace, and richness, and fruitfulness, of 
some dear and honored lives. The prosperity, the 
adversity, the change, the darkness, the storm, the 
peace, the sunset — all this comedy, and tragedy, and 
epic of human life in a single parish, and among the 
friends we love, — who of us can understand it, or 
make one music of it all? Yet still, had we but 
open hearts to see, there stands One in the midst of 
us who knows the Father, who is come to us 
from God. Lord, tell us of these things, of these 
times and seasons of our lives, of that strange event, 
of that hard providence, of that untimely death, of 
all this fret, and worry, and weariness of our life ; of 
this seemingly lawless mingling of good and evil, 
this strange, forest-like blending of the shadows and 
the light in the life of man. Oh ! Master, settle by 
one commanding word of thine the last question 
about which we disciples were disputing by the way ; 



The Positiveness of Jesus, 47 

divide for us our inheritance in thy truth, make all 
plain to our reasons, and level to our feet, and let us 
go in quietness, and be content ! But as we thus 
reason among ourselves, and question in our hearts, 
I hear coming from these Gospels no Verily, verily, 
of our Lord. He answers not a word when we 
would lift the veil from the future, or hear from 
heaven now some one of those many things which 
he has to say hereafter. 

But if we want true hearts, and strength to do and 
dare ; if we would learn the secret of brave, cheerful, 
patient lives, full of grace and truth ; if we wish to 
live with all our souls for noble purpose and with 
great faiths, and immortal hope, then we cannot 
open the New Testament without finding some 
Verily of our Lord waiting to impart to us its power 
and its peace. His divine positiveness is there for all 
our human need to lean upon. His assurance of 
God is there, pervading all his Gospel; and in it, as in 
an atmosphere of light, our spirits grow strong and 
clear. For all high beliefs, for all generous thoughts, 
for all immortal aspiration, the ^^ Verily, verily I say 
unto you " of our Lord sounds through this Gospel 
as the voice of God. And because I have seen the 
Lord Jesus Christ everywhere answering human life, 
meeting all the tides of the human soul, and letting 
them break, and grow still, upon the great positive- 
ness of his Gospel, therefore, I believe that He is 
the sure and abiding Word of God. Because I have 
seen Jesus Christ in the midst of men putting liis 
strength of God beneath their integrity, envelopinix 
their personal consciousness with his presence of 
God's righteousness^ surrounding ''their restlessness 



48 Christian Facts and Forces. 

with God's rest/' and opening all their selfishness out 
into the largeness of his love ; because I have seen 
Jesus Christ holding calm and strong in his assur- 
ance of the heavenly Father, and the eternal life, the 
wills of men that else would have grown faint, and 
the hearts of women that else would have ceased to 
beat; because I have seen Jesus Christ, and may- 
behold him upon any day, and in any town or city 
throughout the world, going before his disciples, and 
answering still with his grand, triumphal Verilies the 
men and women who have followed him, and who 
look up into his revelation of God, and will do his 
will on earth, therefore, I believe Him to be the true 
Messiah, the Son of God, the Way, the Truth, and 
the Life. 

Eemembering these Verilies of our Lord, and with 
regard to what truths they were spoken, I would bid 
you observe, once more, that Christian unity is to be 
realized up on the high plane of this positiveness, and 
along the line of these great spiritual affirmations of 
Jesus Christ. Christ's prayer for the oneness of his 
disciples can never be fulfilled upon any lower 
plane. The churches must go up where Jesus stood 
when he said, ^^ Verily I say unto you," if we would 
find the commanding truths beneath which we can 
all have one Light in our eyes, and one Spirit in our 
hearts. It is useless to seek for Christian unity any 
lower down. The valleys below are full of echoes, 
and in their depths who of us can disentangle the 
passing shadows from the eternal truth ? We must 
seek to bring all our churches up to the clear and 
grand affirmation of the Gospel of God's redeeming 
love. And all conflicts, discords, and clamor of con- 



The Positiveness of Jesus, 49 

troversy in the world and the church should only 
serve to make us turn our faces the more steadily 
toward the Christ, who dwelt always in the simple 
and eternal truths of the Father among his disciples. 
We need to live more in these Verilies of the Christ 
and his Gospel of the kingdom of God. Our Christi- 
anity here in New England, for the salvation of men 
and the redemption of society, needs to care less for 
differences between disciples or churches ; our New 
England Christianity, our American Christianity, 
nay, our missionary Christianity for the whole world, 
should be emptied of the contending voices and the 
harsh discords of the theologians and the churches, 
who cannot fill, with all their childish efforts, the 
trumpet of the Lord ; the Christianity of the world 
needs to be filled, as a trumpet is filled, with One 
single voice as of the messenger from before the face 
of the Lord, calling upon men everywhere to repent 
of their unrighteousness, and proclaiming that the 
kingdom of God is come nigh. 

And, finally, let us not go away thinking of others, 
but of ourselves ; for there is some Verily, verily of 
the Lord for each one of us. You may have heard 
it often, and have struggled against it. It may have 
come to some man as a clear, definite word of duty, 
commanding him to pay that debt, to undo tliat 
wrong, to make that crooked way straight. It may 
have come to some one in the abundance of the 
things which he possesses, and he knew it was i\w 
word of the Lord saying to him, All mine was 
thine, all thine should be mine. It may liavc come, 
in some hour of better impulse, a greeting to your 
soul from the God who made it, asking of you loss 

4 



50 Christian Facts and Forces. 

love of money, and more love of man. It may have 
come in some hour of joy or sorrow, for both are 
alike prophetic words of the Lord to human hearts, 
showing for you possibility of life, purer, richer, 
fuller than you had dreamed. Some Verily of the 
Lord your conscience may have heard many and 
many a time repeated, and you know what service 
was neglected and what duty left undone. It has 
come to some from their childhood, a voice not lost 
through their youth, and though now more easily re- 
fused, still, at times, moving them by an almost resist- 
less impulse to stand up and say, with a man's noble 
humility, or a woman's true devotion, I too would be 
a disciple, and follow no other than Christ the Lord 
through the years, and the ages of ages. " Verily, 
verily, I say unto you." " He that hath ears to hear, 
let him hear.'' 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DISCIPLESHIP. 

" Vtxil^ 3E JE»a2 unto ^m, 35xttpt ^z turn, aniJ Inomt ks IittU t\^iltsxm, jje 
5]&aII in no Msz znUx into tj^ kingdom o£ Jta^m." — Matt, xviii. 3. 

I WISH to speak this morning concerning the begin- 
nings of discipleship. We need, every man of us, 
to find out the real thing wliich is required of us in 
order that we may become Jesus' disciples in deed 
and in truth. We say that a man must be converted. 
And when we would think particularly of the work of 
the Holy Spirit in quickening souls, we speak of con- 
version as regeneration, — a man must be born again. 
To repeat words, however, is not to get at things. 
And we have seen that it was the remarkable habit 
of Jesus to go straight always to the real thing in 
human life. In Jesus' doctrine the moral and divine 
reality of the universe flashed its truth directly into 
the souls of men. To be his disciple, therefore, can 
be to indulge in no fictitious state of mind. Jesus 
Christ surely can accept no discipleship which does 
not begin in something thoroughly honest ; for wliat- 
ever else the Son of man was, he certainly was the 
most real man who ever looked other men in the 
eye. He could remain surrounded by no fictions of 
Hfe. The sun burns up the vapors, and in tlie true 
Light the deeds of men are made manifest. Every- 
thing around liim liad to become real and clear, wlien 
Jesus himself stood in the midst of his disciples. 

51 



52 Christian Facts and Forces, 

Hence, if we would learn what the vital thing 
is which we ought to mean by that worn word con- 
version, we cannot do better than to observe exactly 
what Jesus required of men when he first met them. 
We may take it for granted, certainly, that Jesus 
desired to convert every man and woman whom he 
met in Judea or Galilee. What he said and did, 
therefore, will as certainly teach us what he thought 
men and women ought to do in order to begin to be 
his disciples. The one thing essential to becoming 
a disciple we may trust Jesus to have had upon his 
mind in every instance of his conversation with men. 

Let us study, then, what Jesus sought in the first 
contacts of his Spirit with men and women. 

I remark, in the first place, that he required very 
different things of different people. Need I do more 
than to remind you of the instances mentioned in 
the Gospels to substantiate this statement ? You will 
remember that Jesus met Matthew, and told him to 
give up the publican's business, and follow him. But, 
on the other hand, when Nathanael came to him, all 
that Jesus did was to recognize him, and to leave 
him thinking of a beautiful vision of angels ascend- 
ing and descending upon the Son of man. Once a 
certain lawyer stood up and questioned him, and 
Jesus gave to that man his first lesson in the Chris- 
tian religion by teaching him, in the parable of the 
good Samaritan, who his neighbor was. On the other 
hand, a Master in Israel sought him, and in speaking 
to Nicodemus, Jesus said not one word about human 
neighborliness, but taught him how God loved the 
world, and how man must be born anew in order 
to see the kingdom of God. Again, one out of the 



The Beginnings of Disciples kip, 5 3 

multitude brought to Jesus some dispute about an 
inheritance, and Jesus sought to put that man in the 
way of discipleship by giving him a plain warning 
against covetousness. Once a ruler of the Phari- 
sees, who had a good house and knew how to enter- 
tain, made a feast for him, and Jesus went, as he 
was always willing to go among the rich or the poor, 
whenever he was invited; and when Jesus would 
convert that man to himself, he began not with 
one of the higher truths of the kingdom of heaven, 
but with a practical lesson concerning the most Chris- 
tian way of giving and accepting a dinner or supper. 
You can read it in the fourteenth chapter of Luke. 
There were other people, like the centurion, and the 
blind man whose eyes Jesus opened, of whom the 
Lord at his first meeting with them seems to have 
asked nothing but simple and entire personal trust 
in himself. He did not bid them go and do any- 
thing whatever, but only wait, nothing doubting, to 
see what the Lord would do for them. 

Then there was a man who had been possessed 
with a legion of unclean spirits, which Jesus cast 
out; and when he came down to the boat into which 
Jesus was stepping, and wanted to go witli him and 
be his disciple, Jesus sent that man homo to his 
house and his friends, and bade him tell them how 
great things the Lord had done for him, and how he 
had mercy on him. Jesus did not let that man 
become a disciple by becoming an apostle, giving 
up his business, and setting himself apart in some 
special apostleship ; he taught him that the ])lace for 
him to be a follower of the Son of man was in liis 
house, about his business, among his friends. Yet 



54 Christian Facts a^id Forces, 

there was a certain ruler of whom Jesus made just 
the opposite demand. He had been an excellent 
man, good from his youth up. He represented a 
great deal of religious respectability, and you know 
how hard it often is to convert that to any real sacrifice 
or enthusiastic devotion. That correct man wanted to 
know what good thing he should do in order that he 
might have eternal life. Many men want to Ixave 
eternal life, as they might have a piece of land, or a 
property. And the Lord also wanted that man to 
have eternal life, but Jesus wanted him to have it 
really and essentially, as he himself in his daily doing 
the Father's will had eternal life ; and you remem- 
ber the very hard commandment which seemed to 
the apostles to be almost impossible, but which Jesus 
required of that man in order that he might be per- 
fect : '^ Go, sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, 
and thou shalt have treasure in heaven ; and come, 
follow me.'' 

Two other instances only let me mention. Once 
some Pharisees saw Jesus eating with publicans and 
sinners. We sometimes wonder why the Pharisee 
takes up so much room in the New Testament to the 
exclusion of better things in which we should be 
more interested. AVe read the Gospels, and every 
now and then we come across the hateful Pharisee, 
and behold Jesus judging him. But the room which 
the Pharisee takes in the New Testament does not 
seem disproportionate, when we consider how much 
space the character of the Pharisee has taken in the 
history of the church. We may presume that the 
Lord desired above all things, if it were possible, the 
conversion of the Pharisees. He could pray upon 



The Beginnings of Disciples hip, 5 5 

his cross for his enemies. And what then did Jesus 
say to reach, if possible, those Pharisees ? He said — 
and when he knew that the souls of Pharisees in all 
the coming years might depend upon his saying the 
right thing which the Pharisee must be made to hear, 
or he is lost forever, — Jesus said simply this : ^' But go 
ye and learn what this meaneth, I desire mercy, and 
not sacrifice : for I came not to call the righteous, but 
sinners.'' The theology of Jesus for Pharisees is 
practical ethics. The Pharisee must begin with 
Jesus' doctrine of common morals, if he would be- 
come a disciple of the Lord. 

The other instance is the story of the Canaanitish 
woman. It was a disagreeable incident. Her coming 
seemed to have been too much even for the disciples 
to bear. It probably affected them as it might a 
Christian congregation in a city, should some hag- 
gard outcast, conscious of her need, come trembling 
to church, and be put by some usher in the midst 
of them. The Canaanitish woman nowadays, with 
all the devils that vex her daughters, can find her 
place in some Sunday meeting of the anarchists. 
Peter, and James, and even Matthew the publican, 
were respectable people. They said, " Send her away ; 
for she crieth after us." And even the gentler John 
may have looked as if he felt as the other disciples 
did, though perhaps he was too kind to say so — and 
Jesus himself at first answered her not a word. 
There is a silence of God sometimes in tlie miseries 
of poor people, and the mercy of that silence we do 
not at first understand. And when Jesus at length 
did speak, he jnit before that woman a doubt and 
a difficulty. Doubts and dilHcuUies are often the 



56 Christzafi Facts and Forces. 

Lord's ways of increasing faith. Jesus began by- 
giving that woman a suggestion of scepticism, and its 
trial. I will not repeat the whole pathetic story. It 
is in the fifteenth chapter of Matthew. Those disci- 
ples, under Jesus' training, had become honest enough 
not to forget to record the Lord's words which re- 
buked themselves. After awhile, after Jesus had 
tried that woman's faith and proved it real, he said, 
'^ Be it done unto thee even as thou wilt." 

Such was the way, very different from his manner 
at other times, in which the Lord led one poor soul 
to trust him forever. 

Have I not reminded you already of instances 
enough to prove the assertion with which we began, 
that Jesus required very different things of different 
people in his first contacts with them, in order to 
put them in the way of discipleship? 

I remark, in the second place, that Jesus required 
the same morally real thing of every man and woman 
whom he met. For, study these examples, turn 
them over and over, and discover the intent of the 
Lord in each instance, and you will see how in these 
different ways, and by these various methods, he 
sought in each case to do thorough work in the 
character ; how he put characters to their supreme 
test ; how his words brought each man to the dividing 
of the ways of his life, so that he must decide 
whether he would go God's way, or do something 
else. You can observe at your leisure the remarka- 
ble moral fitness of Jesus' tests of men to their dis- 
positions. Master in Israel, scribe, Pharisee, publi- 
can, Israelite in whom there was no guile, covetous 
man, the women who sought him, — one and all, hear 



The Beginnings of Disciples hip, 5 7 

that word of God which is '' living, and active, and 
sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even 
to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and 
marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and in- 
tents of the heart." And all those persons were in- 
stantly directed by Jesus to some course of thought 
or conduct which, if they had followed it, would 
have led them to be morally genuine and true men, 
even as he was true in his oneness wdth the Father. 

I remark then, in the third place, that the begin- 
ning of Christian discipleship must be for each one 
of us in some real moral determination of character. 
It cannot possibly be anything less than that ; for 
was not Jesus of Nazareth the true man who wanted 
real friends for his disciples? Our text shows this. 
The disciples, you remember, had come to the Lord 
with a question which Jesus himself never could have 
asked of God. It is impossible for us to conceive the 
Son of man asking the Father in heaven. Who shall 
be greatest ? Those men whom Jesus had called to 
be his friends needed to be converted from the 
character which made it morally possible for them 
to ask such a question as that. And he took a little 
child, who could not have entertained such a thouglit 
in its heart, and put the child in the midst of them, 
and said. You must be like that child; except you 
are converted you cannot enter the kingdom of 
heaven. And then the disciples could not have 
mistaken the morally real thing which Jesus meant 
by tlieir conversion. The men who followed Jesus 
of Nazareth could not remain religious dreamers. 
He was sure in some such way as that to awaken 
them from their comfortable iictions of i)iety, and 



58 Christian Fads and Forces. 

to show them that his discipleship meant letting his 
divine character master them. And surely, to begin 
to be a disciple cannot mean anything less now that 
Jesus has ascended, and the Holy Ghost is here. 

The Lord Jesus Christ inspired character and con- 
duct among his disciples. The Holy Spirit is now 
the power of character and conduct among men. 
Salvation is the creation from sinful humanity of a 
society of true characters, and righteous conduct, for 
the ages of ages. 

To be born again of the Holy Spirit may mean 
for us to have in the course of our religious experi- 
ence a great many suggested thoughts, awakened 
feelings, inspiring desires, and even at times glad 
surprises of light, or rare, restful calm of heart. We 
cannot measure, we cannot define, what God's Spirit 
may work in us and for us. But to begin to be a 
disciple is for us to accept the truth, whatever it is, 
which God's Spirit in our hearts brings personally 
home to us, to hear the word, however simple, which 
the Lord is speaking to us, and to turn from what- 
ever else we are following, and to make it our first 
business to do that truth of the Lord in our lives. 
We may find that word of the Spirit, waiting for us 
to obey it, in the next duty which may be sent to us 
from God, or it may be already in our hearts in the 
better thought of life and happiness which comes 
unsought to us. Let us be sure, however, that the 
real Christ from the real God asks of us real Chris- 
tian determination. What the true Man who came 
from God to tell us the truth will be sure to require 
of us, is not that easy compliance with which we 
would confess him while we follow our own desire 



The Beginnings of Discipleship. 59 

of life, nor that fashionable semblance in which we 
think it becoming that religion should dress up 
social respectability. The Lord asks of those who 
would turn, and be his disciples in deed and in truth, 
that right thing which it may cost a man something 
to do ; that generous and genuine service which you 
may not be ready to offer the Master ; or that decisive 
conquest and subjection, so long postponed, of the 
false, worldly self, which has been keeping down the 
true and nobler self. Whatever may be the particu- 
lar determination, sacrifice, or act of obedience and 
faith which lies at the beginning of discipleship 
for any of us, we may be positive that it is something 
pertaining to the heart and substance of char- 
acter, upon which Jesus has his divine eye of hope, 
when he bids us repent and believe, and, with his 
disciples, come and follow him. 

It has sometimes been said, or feared, by verj^ 
excellent people that in the effort of the modern pul- 
pit to teach men to live according to Christianity, as 
an ancient Church father put the new theology of his 
day, we may be in danger of dropping out or mini- 
mizing the doctrines of the Church. On the con- 
trary, the real spiritual forces at which the Cluirch 
in her doctrines has always been grasping, we would 
seek to bring to bear more directly, broadly, and 
morally upon human life and society. AVe would 
free them from any encumbrances which may })re- 
vent their laying hold directly of character and con- 
duct. In particular, this Scriptural doctrine of 
conversion and the new birth needs to be preached 
not only as a truth of dogmatic theology, or as a 
formula for religious experience, but as a veritable 



6o Christian Facts and Forces. 

truth of the Lord to be done on earth, even as Jesus, 
when he would make disciples, began by casting out 
devils, rebuking covetousness, exposing whatever 
was immoral and Satanic in men's conduct, and 
turning men from such dispositions and desires as 
were wrong, and all contrary to God, and setting 
them on their way of new obedience into the king- 
dom of heaven. Conversion ! Do not let us belittle 
and desecrate the Lord's word by speaking it as 
though it could mean anything else than the most 
honest, decisive act and posture which a human 
being can possibly take in the sight of God. 

To be a disciple ! To become a Christian ! It 
certainly does not mean to become perfect at one 
leap. It does not mean at once, and as by magic, 
to be a saint. But it means no little thing. It 
requires real moral determination. It is a religious 
decision. It means for the school-boy or girl to learn 
the next lesson as though the God who made the 
mind had set the task, and to try to do everything 
as a child of God, whom Jesus would bless. It means 
for the young man or woman to do the next thing 
which youth may find it in its way to do, out of the 
purest motive and from the holiest love in which by 
God's grace a soul may go free and glad, j^et duti- 
fully, upon its life's course, as upon an errand to 
which it is sent from the Father. It means for 
the mature man or woman to give up the false habit 
and to forsake the sin which may have wound itself 
around the life, and at any cost to do the right thing 
in God's sight. It means courageous repentance, and 
the most manly affirmation of the living soul and 
its conscience, and sense of immortal destiny, of 



The Beginnings of Discipleship, 6i 

which in the power of the Holy Ghost we can become 
capable. 

And remember that Jesus Christ in his word put 
the two things together : You must turn, and you may 
enter the kingdom of heaven. Turning, and enter- 
ing a kingdom, — these two things belong to Jesus' 
teaching concerning conversion. It is not a mere 
inward turning therefore ; it is a change which puts 
the whole man into right relation and harmony with 
the whole moral universe, and the eternal being of 
the Godhead. 

It is turning from the unreal, empty, sinful world, 
from all its wilderness, and darkness, and terror, and 
entering a kingdom which lies without us, and 
around us, and beyond this earth, full of light and 
companionship, which is just as real as a city with 
its streets, and gates, and happy homes. The disci- 
ple has his citizenship in heaven. Joining the church 
symbolizes and expresses this. To have the Spirit 
of Christ, and to be among the children of heaven, 
is the real thing to be prayed for, and lived for, and, 
when the time comes, to die for. 



VI. 

SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 

l^tabm ; iut Joto 15 it Itat jJ^ ^^noio not iob) la titt-erprtt ll&ij? tim-e ? 
a.itjtr bf)2 ;eiijeTt of jourstli^s jtt&^t je not b^at is ri^i&t?" — Luke xii. 
56-57. 

You notice that this word of our Lord was ad- 
dressed to the multitude. The people were to in- 
terpret the signs of the times. Public opinion 
should be filled with intelligence, and judge what is 
right. You will observe, also, that in this instance 
the Lord applied to the people a word which ordi- 
narily he reserved for their false teachers and leaders — 
" Ye hypocrites." The word hypocrite charges false- 
hood upon the character of a man. And a false 
character necessarily results in a false judgment of 
events. If the people failed of true discernment of 
that Messianic time, it was owing to some falsehood 
in their life. Make the life of the people true, and 
public opinion can be trusted to judge that which is 
right in every time. The instinct of true life is the 
best interpreter of God's times. 

We should fail to follow the command implied in 
this saying of our Lord, did we not, as a Christian 
Church and a Christian ministry, seek to interpret 
the times, and on all questions to make public opinion 
right. 

No Christian pulpit, in loyalty to this word of 
Christ, can hold itself altogether aloof from the pro- 



Signs of the Times, 63 

vidential problems of the hour. No Christian church 
can sit in peaceful and pious seclusion from the 
questions which press upon the life of the people, 
and remain a true witness to the Son of man. Hence, 
upon this first Sabbath of the new year I deem it 
particularly appropriate to pass somewhat beyond 
the range of those ordinary topics of the pulpit 
which concern us more personally as individuals, or 
as a local church, and to seek with you to interpret 
some of the signs of this time. Let me remind you, 
before we proceed to this task, that it is our mission 
to be interpreters, rather than makers, of the prob- 
lems and the duties of the times. It has been said 
with profound historical insight that providence 
makes the problems which present themselves from 
time to time before the church. 

I shall confine my inquiry this morning to only 
two of the significant providential signs of this time. 
I shall speak of present providential indications in 
the social and theological problems which are before 
us. The two are more closely related than may be 
thought. For a socialism which would push man 
along without any religion is laying down but one 
single rail for human progress. So a religious belief 
which does not run parallel with some practical line 
of conduct would be of little use to the people. The 
problem of history is to take humanity out of Baby- 
lon and its iniquities, and to transport it to that 
Jerusalem which is free. Christianity^ wliicli is tlie 
way of human progress, is both truth and practice, 
both theology and life. lie is no friend of man wlio 
would separate the two. Our first inciuirv, accord- 
ingly, concerns the social signs of the times. 



64 Christian Facts and Forces, 

We sometimes speak of the labor question as the 
social question of our time. But it is not. It is only 
one end of the social question. The question be- 
tween capital and labor is not the real question 
before us as citizens and as Christian men, any more 
than the real question before Solomon was, which 
mother should have which half of the child. The 
child was one living whole, and the real question 
was, Who should have charge of it, and bring it up ? 

Society is one living, organic whole, and it cannot 
be split into opposing halves without shedding its 
life-blood. The real social question is, Who shall 
have modern society — the true or the false mother? 
AVhose child is it, the whole of it ? Does it belong 
to the devil, or to God ? This has been the social 
question of all times, and it is preeminently the 
social question of this time. The church will say, 
the life of society shall not be destroyed by any war 
of classes ; humanity is one body, and it must be 
kept as one divine creation, and in it we all must be 
members one of another. Any power that would 
divide humanity is false to man. 

I point to it as one of the signs of the past year 
that this truth of the organic unity, the living soli- 
darity, the common humanity of men, has been 
coming more powerfully into the consciousness of 
the people. An hour of anarchy in Chicago has 
aroused the conscience of the country to this truth 
of our social integrity. The evil and failure of com- 
binations and strikes of one class against another 
class, is teaching the people anew that we must pros- 
per together. And the social fever and excitement 
which sometimes seem to make the whole head of 



Signs of the Times. 65 

our society sick and the whole heart faint — what is 
not that compelKng us all to see ? Are we not learn- 
ing that there is danger for the whole body if we let 
any member suffer? Society cannot drag its feet 
in the mire, and hope to keep its eye alw^ays clear. 
Society cannot continue to let its hands be unpro- 
tected or unclean, and keep its heart merry, or its 
brains free from attacks of delirium. If from all 
these labor troubles, and all this social agitation, 
we are learning this truth of the solidarity of hu- 
manity, this truth, as in our Christian language we 
would put it, that God hath made us members one 
of another, we shall read a sign of this time which 
we must understand, if the blood of the people is 
not to become hot with the sense of wrong, and the 
whole constitution of our society is not to be torn 
and rent by convulsive efforts for industrial liberty. 

I know that some men of insight and intelligence 
are beginning to say the present state of the country 
is ominous, as were the signs of discontent and un- 
easiness in that period which preceded the outbreak 
of the anti-slavery conflict. It cannot, indeed, be 
denied that great masses of our countrymen are feel- 
ing a sense of grievance which they find it difficult 
to define. And the past year has left as a sign of 
what may be coming, not, indeed, the strikes which 
have spent their force, not the method of boycotting 
which has already become too dull a weapon for use, 
but a new labor movement in politics; and tliat is 
a sign of possible demands for wo know not what 
upon tlie organic law of the land. AVo must recog- 
nize this sign if wo Avoiild inter[)rei this iiine. 1>iit 
over all the turmoil of tlio cataract, and (lie wiKIness 

5 



66 Christian Facts and Forces. 

of the agitation, I see God's sign of hope. For this 
also is plain, that an instinct of justice and a love 
of humanity are still the deepest things, and the truest, 
in the heart of the people. And the best mind of 
this country is giving itself with scientific thorough- 
ness, yet with consecrated enthusiasm, to the study 
of these problems, and fitting itself for leadership 
of the people through these dangers. I speak now 
not merely of the discussion of these questions in 
almost every religious assembly and in many pul- 
pits — for much of our eSbrt may have its only use 
in calling more general attention to social and in- 
dustrial problems which others, more specially 
trained, must work out in the halls of legislation, 
and in the business of the world, — but I refer in 
attestation of my statement, and as a reason of hope, 
to the fact that the young men who gather at the 
centres of education in this land are being trained 
in our universities to understand and to meet these 
social and political questions, as in my college days 
no young man anywhere could be trained. Our 
New England colleges, true to the memories of the 
men who founded them for country and for God, are 
educating our j^outh, the sons of rich men and of 
poor men together, to be teachers and leaders of the 
people along the lines of true progress; and the 
influence of men so trained will be felt in the legis- 
lation and the life of this country after the dema- 
gogue shall have fallen with his blind followers into 
the ditch, and the people will pass on under wiser 
guidance to a civilization more prosperous, more 
equal, and more just. It is no insignificant indica- 
tion of this quiet, but potential work which is being 



Signs of the Times. 67 

done at our universities, when rich men in Boston 
begin to inquire what influence at Harvard has led 
their sons to develop an unusual interest in the con- 
dition and ideas of laborers in their employ ; and it 
is a gratifying sign also of this time of social agita- 
tion and hope, that a graduate course of training in 
these subjects marks the new era of the old Yale. 
" The scholar/' to quote a phrase which I heard dur- 
ing my college days and have not forgotten, *^ re- 
ceives the people's oil, and is to return it to them in 
light." The Christian pulpit, too, wherever, at least, 
it has felt a fresh breath from the Spirit, is inspired 
with the Lord's word of the Gospel of the kingdom, 
and is preaching the truth not merely of individual 
election, but of the redemption of the world in 
Christ, and the election of all believers to service and 
to usefulness for the kingdom of God's sake. 

I pass now from the mention of this most interest- 
ing sign, and succession of signs, of our time to the 
consideration of the signs which are apparent in the 
theological sky. 

A glance through the past is necessary for any 
appreciation of recent theological signs. In the 
New Testament is to be found an Epistle to the 
Romans. The very title marked a new era in the 
history of the true religion. Christ was preached to 
the Romans. And one distinguishing characteristic 
of the style, and of the whole mode of approach to 
the truth of Christ, in that Ei)istle is its adaptation 
to the Roman habit of mind. St. Paul was fitted 
and chosen for tliat special work. St. Paul was liim- 
self a Hebrew lawyer. lie liad been trained in a 
school of Jewish law; and besides that, he was a 



68 Christian Facts and Forces, 

Roman citizen, and as a Roman citizen probably- 
understood something of Roman law. With that 
Epistle to the Romans there begins the Roman con- 
ception of Christianity. It is a forensic presentation 
of Divine truth, such a presentation as Roman law- 
yers might appropriate. Its practical principles con- 
cerning the duties of the strong to the weak are 
particularly fitted to Roman character and Roman 
Christianity. This conception of truth which the 
Apostle, who could be all things to all men, so wisely 
presented, and which he was chosen and inspired to 
begin to teach, has been wrought out through a long 
history of controversy and creed. A distinguished 
jurist has lately had occasion to point out how 
thoroughly the Roman jurisprudence has saturated 
our traditional theology. " The principles of the 
Roman law colored theology after the Reformation 
as well as before." Some time since a friend narrated 
to me the difficulties in the way of a profession of 
faith, which a thoughtful person had experienced 
who had been brought up under current notions of 
Christianity. Those difficulties were not doubts 
of the Gospel of God's love in Jesus Christ our 
Lord. They were found to resolve themselves 
mostly into difficulties with the Roman law concep- 
tion of Christianity, as that conception has been 
elaborated in certain received formulas, and imposed 
as a test of sound belief. They were difficulties which 
might more properly be charged to the code of Jus- 
tinian than to the Gospel of the Son of man. 

Some of the ordinary phrases which are familiar 
to us in our Protestant creeds have been transferred 
almost bodily from the Roman law. Now, observe, 



Signs of the Times, 69 

I beg of you, that I do not suggest that this concep- 
tion of Christianity, and its development in our Latin 
creeds, is altogether false, or was unnecessary. It is, 
in its way, and rightly understood, a true and help- 
ful conception. It may still be useful to us, for ex- 
ample, to conceive of Christ's atonement under the 
old common law principle of the payment of a debt 
by an accepted substitute, although that legal form 
has fallen into disuse, and few are familiar with it. 
I do not deny that the truth of Christ could adapt 
itself without untruthfulness to the Roman habit of 
mind, because that would be to refuse to accept as 
canonical the Epistle to the Romans ; neither do I 
deny that this whole Latin and legal conception and 
systemization of Christian doctrine, although it has 
been carried far beyond the scope of the Apostle 
Paul's argument to the Romans, has been a most 
necessary and providential development, and that it 
has borne important fruits which remain for our use 
and profit. But my point is that this whole Roman 
era of Christianity is evidently in this century com- 
ing to its period. 

I state this as a fact which is too evident to be 
denied by any one who is familiar with the history of 
modern theology. Now I want to make plain to you, 
if possible, in a few words, the significance of this fact 
as a providential sign for us to interpret. I may 
make what I would state clearer to legal minds, per- 
haps, by comparing recent change and, as T believe, 
progress in Cliristian tlieology, to the advauc^o whicli 
has been made in modern juris})rudence. The 
paralh^l is more ilUiminative because our jurispru- 
dence and our formal notions of Christian doctrine 



*]0 Christian Facts and Forces. 

have, as was just stated, much that is common in the 
phraseology of the Roman law. The progress of 
modern jurisprudence, as I understand it, has been 
made mainly in what Jeremy Bentham distinguished 
as the adjective portion in contrast with the sub- 
stantive portion of the law. There has been to some 
extent a re-codification of law, but the progress has 
been mainly in modes of procedure. The change 
has been mainly not in the substantive, but in the 
adjective, not in the essential principles of law so 
much as in their mode of application. And in the 
simplification of modes of law, in methods of bring- 
ing principles of law to bear more directly and really 
upon cases, progress has been made, and much pro- 
gress remains to be made. Now, precisely this is 
what the theology which began in this country with 
Jonathan Edwards, and whose end of improvement 
is not yet, has been doing, and will do. The essen- 
tial principles of the Gospel have not been aban- 
doned, and they will not be. They are older than 
any of its existing forms. There has been no loss 
from the substance of the Gospel, but there has been 
much gain in the simplicity of the adjectives. We 
have not abandoned, indeed, all Roman forms of 
presenting the Gospel, but we have declared that we 
will not be bound by them. And I am sure the 
mode of procedure has been simplified, and will be 
still more in all our churches. We have been reviv- 
ing the older Greek theology, and have dared to 
think with Origen, and Clement of Alexandria, and 
with Justin Martyr, and with St. John, as w^ell as 
with Calvin, and Augustine, and Irenseus, or in con- 
tact with that one side of St. Paul's many-sidedness 



Signs of the Times, 7 1 

which is presented particularly in the Epistle to the 
Romans. And the one common motto of the 
theology of this present time is to be found in that 
old saying of an ancient father, " Let us learn to live 
according to Christianity.'^ Such, it has been justly 
observed, is the distinguishing feature and sign of a 
living and hopeful theology, " Let us learn to think 
according to Christ Jesus." 

I have spoken of this movement, which is now quite 
general and powerful, as a movement which began 
with Jonathan Edwards. He accepted, for he had no 
other choice, the theological and philosophical forms 
of his day ; but his spiritual being overflowed them, 
and his spiritual thought to-day is flowing on in 
broader channels than he knew. The theology of 
New England has always carried in it a spirit and a 
life which could not be confined in the swaddling 
clothes in which its infancy was wrapped. It broke 
loose from Calvinism by grasping boldly the princi- 
ple of a universal atonement for all men. It shook 
off a Roman limitation in its abandonment of the 
idea of mankind as being bound, like one Roman 
family, under the headship of Adam — the federal 
theology as it used to be called, and which was re- 
garded by many in its day as the faith once delivered 
to the saints. It proclaimed with no uncertain 
sound the individual responsibility of every sinner 
before God. It still subscribed, but in no servile 
subjection, to the Westminster Standards — the Cate- 
chisms and the Confession of Faith — which were 
statements of doctrine hvrgcly legal and ])olitical in 
their origin and their forms. But it went boldly back 



72 Christian Facts and Forces, 

to the New Testament, and sought to become a dis- 
ciple of Jesus himself. It dared believe that the 
non-elect nations are not enemies, and it became a 
missionary faith. It would be disloyalty to the best 
traditions of our New England theology, and bond- 
age to a yoke to which our fathers would have given 
place by subjection, no, not for an hour, should we 
not follow still onwards the way of God's providence 
through the new problems, and among the new 
sciences, and in the light of the growing revelation 
which God is constantly making of himself in the 
history of his redeeming love. I hail it then as a 
happy sign of our times that we are working out 
anew our forms and our statements of belief to 
answer the vital necessities of faith, and to meet the 
demands of the world upon a Christianity which is 
to be light for the Oriental mind in India as well as 
for ourselves. And I hail it as a hopeful sign of the 
times that the instinct of the religious public, even 
with swifter and surer discernment than the minds 
of many of us clergymen, who have been trained in 
the theology of the Latin confessions, has discerned 
this need of a simple Gospel for the missionary 
opportunity of the present. 

I will suffer mj^self to allude but briefly to the con- 
troversies of the day through all the alarms and the 
clangor of which the new missionary era of Chris- 
tianity is to be rung in. These controversies and 
agitations are peculiar to no denomination, and they 
are originated by no men. God sets the tasks of his 
church in every age. Our problems of faith and life 
are providential problems, and all churches, nay, all 



Signs of the Times, 



parties even in the churches, under God's overruling 
wisdom, are working together for the greater good 
and the further advance of Christ's kingdom. 

In our own denomination, the general movement 
which I have been describing has been obstructed 
temporarily, or held back, at two separate points, and 
two controversies have arisen. Of one of these* I 
will not suffer myself at this time to speak. Of the 
other, I will remark that the difficulty which has 
arisen, and which is still unsettled, in the adminis- 
tration of the American Board, may involve some 
temporary loss of money and of men to missionary 
service, but it should involve on our part no loss of 
steadfast loyalty toward the work of the Board itself 
Policies change, and men change, but the cause of 
missions is the cause of Christ. And it is my firm 
belief that, as the final result of this whole painful 
controversy, all obstructions will be removed which 
may now lie in the way of the best educated and 
most catholic missionary service, and that whatever 
traditional opinions or objections in the administra- 
tion of the Board are now preventing our churches 
from sending as missionaries our young men who are 
prepared to teach in the spirit of free and reverent 
Christian scholarship, as they have been taught in 
our best theological seminaries, are obstacles and 
obstructions to the kingdom of God which arc des- 
tined erelong to bo swept away before the rising 
public opinion of tlie Congregational churches, whose 
servant, and not whose master, the American Board is. 

Two signs of the times are meeting, and tlieir 
interpretation is not obscure, — on the one liand an 

■^ The Andover Controversy. 



74 Christian Facts and Forces, 

open door for the Gospel to the higher classes of the 
pagan world, and on the other hand the education 
of young men, in our leading theological seminaries, 
to meet with broad and comprehensive Christian 
wisdom the thoughts of men in all lands. If we are 
wise to discern these manifest signs, and will bravely 
follow the indications of God's will in them, we shall 
see this century close in grander missionary triumph 
than our fathers could have dreamed. And the 
dawn of another of the days of the Son of man is 
already in our skies. Let our faces be toward its 
blessed light. 

I would turn with hopeful earnestness now to the 
younger members of this church and congregation. 
I would have you feel that you are living in one of 
the days of the Son of man. I would show you that 
this is a Christian world, and that you may find 
Christ's work everywhere to be done in it. I would 
have you see what is coming to me with ever stronger 
conviction, that in Christ, and in the company of his 
disciples, you can find life worth living, and your 
characters can become complete and radiant. The 
new year has begun. The old is gone. The past 
of this church is secure ; its future is with the young 
men and the young women to whom I preach. Give 
to all its work your help and your enthusiasm. And 
if we should be permitted to stand together at the 
close of this greatest of the Christian centuries, and 
some who are now consecrating their early youth 
to the Lord should be found still looking on into 
years of service beyond any possibility of my age 
then, may grace be given me to bid you still go for- 
ward, bound to the past by no teaching of mine, with 



Signs of the Times, 75 

minds free to follow whatever truth of God may still 
break from his Word, or be made manifest in his 
constant revelation of himself in his works and in 
redemption, with no fetters upon your thoughts, but 
with the cross of Christ upon your hearts. And on 
this first Sabbath of another of the years of the Son 
of man, I would ask again some who are not num- 
bered with us, but whose hearts are already Chris- 
tian, to be truer to themselves, and to become more 
helpful to others, by taking upon themselves with us 
the vows of the Lord's house. 



VIL 
THE NOTE OF UNIVERSALITY. 

" ®r tsts^ist ^t i\}t (^uxtb jof (KolJ ? "— i Cor. xi. 22. 

It is important for us to put the work of the local 
church in its right Christian setting. The single 
congregation is a unit in the great multiple of com- 
munions which constitute the Church of God. The 
Church of the living God is the large, redeemed 
humanity of which Christ is the Head, and of which 
all Christian communions are the members. 

It is necessary for us that the kingdom of God 
should be localized for our service and devotion in 
single and separate churches. The strong emotions 
of men's souls gather around definite objects. We 
want something near, distinct, realizable, to which to 
give our utmost efforts. Men in battle look to their 
regimental colors for their rallying-point. The 
country is localized to their eyes in those colors, and 
brave men will cling to them under hottest fire. 
Yet those colors would be nothing of themselves, 
did they not belong to the country and represent 
the country. Thus the devotions of Christians 
gather in our local churches and in our separate 
denominations; yet these would not be worth the 
service of men, did they not all stand for the large 
idea and represent the grand truth of a redeemed 
humanity, the Church of the Hving God. To follow 
the colors of a particular church or sect for its own 

76 



The Note of Universality. 77 

sake might prove to be treason to the Church of 
God. " For the Kingdom of God's sake " is the 
motto which should fly upon the flag of every church 
in the world. 

I wish this morning, accordingly, as a fitting 
preparation for our annual church-meeting, to direct 
your thoughts to this sign of universality which be- 
longs to the true Church, and which must be kept, 
therefore, upon its banner by any individual church 
which is to represent in its place the Church of God. 

The Church of God is a universal institution for 
man. The Church is for humanity. The Church 
belongs to all men, although all men may not con- 
sent to belong to the Church. 

If we listen to the Gospel which Jesus came preach- 
ing, we cannot fail to hear ringing in it this clear 
note of universality. It was the Gospel of the king- 
dom which he came preaching. It was not a Gospel 
of individual election merely, nor of personal salva- 
tion simply, but the Gospel of the Kingdom w^hich 
he came preaching — the Gospel of a redeemed society 
organized in righteousness, and vital with the Spirit 
of love — the Gospel of the kingdom of Heaven. 

The daily life of the Son of man was marked 
by this sign of universality. Jesus' conduct never 
could be contained in the measures of the scribes 
and Pharisees. His life overflowed Judaic limita- 
tions. It was every day the life of man for man. As 
such it was a constant surprise to liis disciples. The 
one thing tliat perplexed the scribes and baffled the 
cliief priests was this universality of Jesus' sympa- 
tliy and teaching. It was a larger humanity tliau 
Jerusalem could understand. The publican won- 



78 Christian Facts and Forces. 

dered at his kindly word, and the common people 
never heard man speak like this man. On almost 
every page of the Gospel some incident brings 
out, or some passing word of Jesus reveals, this uni- 
versal humanity of the Christ. All the barriers 
which national pride, religious customs, or Pharisaic 
misinterpretations of God's words had built and made 
impassable between man and man, Jesus ignores 
in his conduct, or sweeps away with his resistless 
grace. Recall, for example, that scene at which 
the scribes and Pharisees were shocked, when Jesus 
sat at meat with publicans and sinners. Recall that 
scene at Jacob's well at which even the good disciples 
were surprised. Not even the ancient law of the 
Sabbath, hedged about as it had been by the strict 
interpretations of the Rabbles, could restrain his 
divine humanity. He healed the impotent man, 
and restored the sight of the blind on the Sabbath- 
day, and proclaimed that even an institution so 
sacred to God from the completion of the creation 
as the Sabbath was made for man. 

This note of some universal good for man to 
man, to which Jesus' daily conduct was keyed, per- 
vades also and harmonizes all his doctrines. No 
teacher like the Son of man had ever used the uni- 
versal adjectives in speaking to men. He did not 
use the language of election and discrimination. 
His call was for the many. Come unto me, all ye 
that labor — if any man have ears to hear — if any 
man will come after me — whosoever, therefore, shall 
confess me — whosoever shall do the will of God. 
We cannot take these universals out of the speech 
of Jesus without taking all the music from it. 



The Note of Unive7''sality, 79 

Jesus' words of life are for humanity. His divine 
speech of redemption is for man as man. Jesus' 
promises are for us as individuals because they are 
for us as men. Because we belong to the world for 
which God gave his Son we can hope to have part in 
its final redemption. Because we bear the common 
human nature which he took upon himself, and in 
which he made confession for our sin, and was 
obedient unto death, we can have personal part in 
that forgiven, regenerated, and restored humanity in 
Christ in which God shall be glorified. 

I have just been reminding you how universal 
were the teachings and the life of Jesus in their sym- 
pathy and significance ; but the Person also of Jesus 
is distinguished from all others by this sign of uni- 
versality. For when we wish to designate Jesus of 
Nazareth, to describe him by the one word which is 
most distinctive of him, what is the name which is 
his as it belongs to no other? He has named himself 
in his human place in history, " I, the Son of man." 
" The Son of man goeth as it is written of him." 
" The Son of man must be lifted up ? Who is this Son 
of man T When the disciples began to realize who 
and what manner of man the Son of man was, the 
other confession followed of itself, " Thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the living God." And upon the 
man who first learned and confessed that whole truth 
of the Son of man and the Son of God, Christ said 
the church should be built. To Peter in his first 
clear, conscious confession of what Christ is as the 
Son of man and God, the Lord gave the promise of 
his church. 

The church, therefore, whoso promise was given in 



8o Christian Facts and Fo7^ces, 

that moment of the disciple's discernment of the 
divine human Person of the Christ, should be char- 
acterized by the same note of universality, and 
marked by the same sign of sympathy and signifi- 
cance for all men. It is not to be a chosen school of 
disciples around their Teacher; it is not to be a 
national church — another temple in Jerusalem ; it 
is not to be a state church — a new Rome over the 
whole world. Not as such a Master and Lord had 
Peter discerned the Son of man to be, whom he con- 
fessed as the Son of God. Peter had recognized, 
dimly and darkly it may be, the divine humanity of 
the Lord Jesus Christ. There would still be needed 
the vision of the sheet let down from heaven, and 
the call which came to him from Cornelius — that 
righteous heathen man who was to have the Gospel 
preached to him for his salvation, — and there would 
be needed also the marvelous inspiration of the day 
of Pentecost to fit Peter and to make him ready to 
lay the foundation among the Gentiles of the church 
of the Son of man. In due time the needed enlarge- 
ment of his knowledge of Christ was given, and 
afterward through all the Apostle's preaching and 
epistles we can hear sounding the same note of uni- 
versal grace and divine love for the world which was 
struck in the song of the angels at the birth of 
Christ, and which pervades, like celestial music, the 
speech, and doctrine, and sacrifice of the Son of 
man. 

I hold, therefore, this idea of a universal good for 
man to be the true idea of the Church of God — the 
idea to be derived from the Gospels and the Person of 
Christ, from Pentecost and from Peter, and from all 



The Note of Universality, 8i 

the apostles, at least after Pentecost. It is the idea 
not of some select society, or exclusive body, or 
isolated communion of men, but the grand, inspiring 
idea of a society in which all men are to become one, 
of a body in which all particular groups and affini- 
ties of men are to be members one of another — of a 
Church of the living God for the world. 

How, then, is such an idea ever to be realized ? 
Is it in any manner coming to realization on this 
earth ? Or is this also a dream — a Christian 
dream — of humanity ? A far-off vision, unsub- 
stantial as a dream, will not satisfy the present social, 
Messianic longing of our world. It would not be 
enough to point men who are hungry to the empty 
sky and say, See what golden color rims the far 
horizon. It is something — indeed, often it is very 
much — to be able to give to people a brighter sky for 
them to live and to toil under. Eeligion does give 
bright, pure sky for life, where otherwise there would 
be no outlook, and only darkness. But more than 
this the religion of Christ in our churches is required 
to do for the people, if our Christ be the true ]\Ies- 
siali. A hungry world wants not merely colors of 
transfigured clouds to delight the eye and to cheer 
the heart; it wants heaven's liglit as that light lias 
been taken up, transformed, and oflered freely to it, 
in good wheat and corn ; and the churches of ( u^d 
are to be the fields and granaries in whicli tlie liglit 
of the Gospel is converted and gathered uj) into tlie 
bread of heaven for the life of the people. 

Tlu^ churches are called, in the name of the Son 
of man, to represent and to begin to n^ilize on (\irih 
this true society, this large, generous, rrtKHMned 



82 Christian Facts and Forces, 

humanity, which is the Church of the living God. 
And although the actual Christianity of an age may 
seem to lie in sharp contrast against this divine ideal, 
even as a low fen may lie in dark contrast beneath a 
sunset, nevertheless, let us keep this ideal shining in 
our eyes, let us cherish in our hearts the inspiration 
of this hope of a Church of humanity. And per- 
haps never more clearly or hopefully has the way 
been shown in which the city of God is coming from 
heaven, than it is revealed by the course of Chris- 
tianity in these latter days. For this is preeminently 
the age of missionary Christianity and the missionary 
church ; and what is that but the beginning of the 
holy catholic Church universal ? 

Three days of the Son of man, at least, in Chris- 
tian history have preceded our day. The first was 
the Apostolic age, that day of glorious beginnings 
of Christianity. It was necessarily, however, an era 
of but partial applications of Christ's words to the 
life of the people. The Apostolic Church must strug- 
gle for its right to be in the Roman world ; it could 
not reach out and lay hold in every direction of 
Roman manners and institutions. The Apostles 
were called to liberate and set in motion the Chris- 
tian ideas, but not to apply them universally to their 
world and its customs. The time, for instance, was 
not yet come for Christianity to meet, and to settle, 
according to Christ, the question of human slavery. 
Paul indeed planted the Christian principle of liberty 
in the epistle to Philemon. Put all the sentiments 
of liberty together which may be extracted from the 
Greek and Roman classics, and they would not yield 
the principles and power of human liberty, sure in 



The Note of Universality. 83 

time to grow and to come to their hour in history, 
which were potential in the Church-Hfe that Paul 
planted and Apollos watered. 

After this age of Apostolic beginnings and partial 
applications of the Gospel to society there followed in 
God's educational providence the age of the power of 
external law, and the era of the outward unity of 
the Church. The Roman age of Christian history 
witnessed an external universality of the Churcli. 
The Roman idea of unity and universality as a dis- 
tinctive note of the Church of God was profoundly 
true ; but its method of realizing that idea on earth 
was the way of Caesar rather than the way of the 
Son of man. A return from Roman Catholic su- 
premacy to the authority of the Son of man followed 
next, in the divine order of history, through the 
reformation. And now that through Protestantism 
and Puritanism we have been brought safely back 
from the Latin Church to the Apostolic Church — 
what is the next step forward as the signs of the 
times show the way in which the Son of man may 
be discerned still going before his people? 

Obviously the providential tasks which are laid 
upon our present Christianity, are compelling the 
churches to take some further step forward ; or they 
will die out if they stand motionless and idle in tlie 
old ways. Look about you, observe the devouring 
wants of our industrial civilization, and judge for 
yourselves, if this necessity of further progress be not 
a question of the life of our present forms of organ- 
ized Christianity. 

For what are the chief (juestions of life now the 
world over? Clearly, they are social problems. 



84 Chnstiaii Facts and Forces, 

And what are these social questions ? Disputes be- 
tween those who work, and those who win ? between 
those who have little, and those who have enough, 
and to spare ? No, no. These are only the surface 
agitations of life. The social question goes deeper. 
It is a broader and profounder problem than any 
passing strife of labor and capital. How shall men 
learn to live together ? Common physical necessities 
force this simple, yet hardest social question upon 
modern society. Because men burn coal, for exam- 
ple, they must come to some understanding as to 
how men are to live and work together. How not 
only in this city, or this country, but how in the 
whole world shall men live together ? That is the 
real social question, and all labor troubles, or waste- 
ful competitions, or hurtful combinations, are symp- 
toms and signs of this social moral question, this 
vital problem of society. And it is a world-question. 
No country now by any tariff or embargo can take 
itself out of the world. No nation can live for itself 
alone. The fates of the modern nations are bound 
together. The problem of healthful and prosperous 
civilization in one land is involved in the problem 
of healthful and prosperous civilization over the 
whole world. There is nothing so foreign that it 
may not become domestic to any country. The des- 
tiny of this world, it is increasingly evident, is to be 
one destiny. 

To the Church of God providence is bringing home 
this one social question of the world. How then are 
the churches to answer it ? Not in the way of Rome. 
The imperial age is past and gone. The Son of man 
will not be enthroned as Caesar. There is no way of 



The Note of Universality, 85 



legislation to the millennium. The kingdom of 
heaven is not coming through modern legislatures. 
Once the Roman Church brought the people under 
the law, and it was good for the world that it was 
brought into some order and unity. The Latin 
genius for ruling was providentially used in the 
development of Christ's kingdom, and the strong 
Roman mind of Calvin also was called of God to 
rule Protestantism for a season ; when however the 
necessity and the age for that talent and that service 
are past, then a survival or forced imitation of it 
may become obstructive and hurtful. 

How is the present Church to meet this present 
social problem of the world? In the sixteenth cen- 
tury the old man of Rome, swollen with corruptions, 
was not sent to do God^s work, but the Lord called 
the new man of Protestantism to sound to the nations 
its bugle note of Christian liberty. Neither shall the 
old man of Protestantism, shrunken in muscle, its 
separate members scarce hanging together, bound 
helplessly to its past, mumbling its creeds of better 
times, and living on the income of its capital laid up 
in more fortunate days, be the new man of the 
coming day, fearless of the light, strong in hope, 
going forth unbound and unburdened, in the unity 
of the Spirit, and with Christ's constraining love in 
its heart, to cast out the devils of our modern civiliza- 
tion, to heal tlie sufferings of whole classes of men, 
and to preach. The Kingdom of lieaven is at hand. 

Verily, the days are coming — are tlioy not now 
at liand ? — when the Son of man will open his moulli, 
and bless tlio mnltitudos in our clnirclios, and in the 
power of his Spirit our Christianity shall boconio us 



86 Christian Facts and Forces. 

never before the Church of God for the world. We 
are to see more of this redeemed, and true, and satis- 
fied humanity here upon this earth. The churches 
are becoming more deeply conscious that they exist 
not for themselves, nor for the salvation of their own 
members only, but for some divine blessing for all 
men. The true Church is a divine institution which 
belongs, like the creation itself, to mankind, and in 
which all men born into this world have divine 
rights. The Church of God is an order of human 
society, a hearth of humanity, a household of God 
in which, according to God's eternal purpose in 
Christ Jesus, every human being has birthright and 
promise of redemption; and it is the mission and 
the work of the churches to proclaim to every crea- 
ture that the Church of God belongs to them, and 
that as men for whom, every one of them, Christ 
tasted death, they have gracious rights in the Church 
of the living God. The Church belongs to you, 
whether you will belong to it or not. The Church is 
for the world, whether the world now be for or 
against the Church. 

I have been speaking of a large subject — too great 
for a brief sermon. But I shall reach my aim, what- 
ever else be left unsaid, if by these remarks I may 
succeed in putting our thought of our local Church, 
its history, its present work, its future promise, into 
this larger thought of the Church of God, holy, 
catholic, universal, which is for mankind, and which 
shall be the final society of this earth. I am sure 
that if we can gain and keep, even in our hopes and 
dreams, this larger, divine idea of a world-church — 
a church for the world, — belonging by a divine order 



The Note of Universality, 87 

to the world, and not permitted to stop or rest in its 
social and missionary endeavor until it becomes in 
fact, as it is in idea and power, the Church of the 
world, — we shall, thereby, receive an inspiration 
and a joy in our particular church-membership and 
our special church duties which we can find in no 
other way. 

Two further consequences of great moment follow 
from this truth that the Church, by the decree of 
God's love for the world, belongs to mankind, and 
that the Church in the end is to prove itself to be the 
world-church, the pure and happy society in which 
heaven and earth are reconciled. 

The first of these is that we who belong to particu- 
lar communions of believers should be careful in our 
administration of them not to interfere with the 
divine rights of any man in the Church of God. 
" Repent : for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," 
Jesus began to preach. Our authorized missionary 
message still is. Repent and believe, for the Churcli 
is here as the sign and witness of that kingdom 
of God. We must look carefully to it lest by 
incidental beliefs, or temporary forms, or rules of 
expediency, we preach some other Gospel, and ex- 
clude some souls from our churchly participation in 
the kingdom of God. All men who come as disci- 
ples of Christ, have divine rights to any table of 
communion which is spread in the name of Christ. 
If Christ be indeed set forth here, there is no heathen 
man or publican who has not the right of one of 
the children of God, and one of the Lord's brethren, 
to be present and to commune where Jesus himself 
is present in the midst of his disciples. 



88 Christian Facts and Forces, 

The missionary motive of the churches lies also 
in this Gospel of the kingdom, and the claims of 
the world upon disciples of the Son of man. All 
men have gracious rights in the name of Christ to 
some communication of the Gospel of a universal 
atonement. The divine rights of the world to the 
Church, and in the Church, impose upon us the pre- 
sent and urgent missionary obligation ; and all be- 
yond our power to accomj)lish belongs to the gracious 
responsibility for the world which God in Christ 
freely assumed upon the Cross. The commandment 
which the ascending Lord gave his apostles is con- 
sonant with his life and death, and with the essen- 
tial character of his Gospel, which is to be preached 
to every creature. Such is its nature and intent ; it 
is its essential character that it is to be preached to 
every creature, — to the utmost limit of present possi- 
bility by us, and beyond our power, how, or when, or 
where, we may not know ; for no man of us has 
revelation or authority to determine the times and 
the seasons of the coming of the Son of man to men. 

The other consequence of this truth is the follow- 
ing : men who are already in the Church have right 
to stay there, and to work out honestly and patiently 
within the Church any questions or doubts which 
may trouble them. A Christian man in the Church 
has the right of a disciple to meet with a candid 
mind all facts which may be discovered, and to study 
all questions which may arise before his reason. The 
disciples of old were constantly going back to the 
Son of man with some new question, or from some 
fresh perplexity. We have the rights of students, 
the rights of honest minds, the rights of reason, to 



The Note of Universality. 89 

life-long inquiries within the Church of God. The 
worst faithlessness is to dodge truths, and to be afraid 
of facts. Still, the Son of man as of old, dwells 
among the questionings of men. I speak explicitly 
and with emphasis, because I know there are men 
already in the Church who sometimes wonder 
whether amid all their mental difficulties, and with 
the questionings of their growth in knowledge, they 
have moral right still to belong to any church. Nay, 
the Church of God belongs to you, and you have a 
birthright in it. Your hearts having been there 
almost from your childhood, your desires of life 
being there to-day, you have within the Church of 
God a man's right of reverent thought before the 
Lord. Until you have made up your mind to take 
all that you have, and go to a far country, you have 
the right of a son to your Father's house. And 
there is no better place than within the communion 
of the Church for you to meet the questions of your 
lives. Many difficulties and doubts you can settle 
better in the company of disciples than j^ou possibly 
can in any other fellowship. And nothing pertain- 
ing to the life of a true, growing, honest soul should 
ever be deemed foreign to the communion of the 
Son of man. Every truth of the creation that ever 
shall show itself to be true, belongs to the Church 
of God. And surely in the most consecrated society 
of souls the final truth of our human life and death 
can best be studied and known. So Thomas of old 
kept in the Church, although he doubted. 1 le know 
that the best place where lie might learn whether 
the Lord was risen indeed, was the ])laco where tlie 
disciples were met together. And thougli lie was a 



90 CJunstian Facts and Fo7'ces, 

doubter, and had not hid his doubt, the disciples did 
not think of closing against him the door of the 
room where their Lord might find them and him. 
And so, Thomas, the honest sceptic, became an honest 
apostle. For every Thomas who has accepted the 
word of the Lord, " Repent : for the kingdom of 
heaven is at hand," although he may not yet 
have learned to say with an undoubting mind, " My 
Lord, and my God," the Church, like the disciples 
of old, can surely afford to keep some place within 
its chamber of communion, until Thomas shall also 
see for himself, and worship. 

In conclusion it follows from this truth that the 
Church of God belongs to mankind, that every man 
to whom it is presented has some corresponding 
obligation towards it. A divine intention for man 
creates a duty on the part of all to whom it is made 
known. We hear this note of universality in the 
Gospel, and to it our lives should make prompt 
response. This divine fact that God has on earth a 
Church for man, that there is to be gathered in the 
name of Christ a true society of men, renders any 
self-isolation, or unwillingness to throw ourselves 
into this divine order of human life, or Church for 
man, a serious failure on the part of those to whom 
this divine call comes. 

The world is redeemed in Christ, and it is a sin 
and a shame to live in it as though it were not a 
redeemed world. There is a Church of God, already 
begun on earth and in heaven, forming, growing, 
expanding, having a glorious world-task committed 
to it ; and it is ignoble not to have part in it and 
its work. There is to be a new heaven and a new 



The Note of Universality, 91 



earth, and all true and generous life which shall not 
have shrunk in selfishness, and shrivelled in sin, 
and hardened in impenitence, until like a dead bough 
it be fit only to be burned, shall be quickened, and 
perfected, shall blossom and bear fruit, in that king- 
dom of heaven. 



VIII. 

ZEBEDEE^S ABSENCE, 

*' W^m tzmz to tint lf)e molf)^r of Ztlt)itt'n t\iXtixm ^'\i\ \tx jEfons, 
toorjsSippin^ Jim, aititJ toiriit^ a x-ertain tiiu^of tint." — Matt. xx. 20. 

But where was Zebedee ? Why did he not come 
too ? His sons and his wife were with Jesus. How 
happened it that Zebedee never was found with his 
family among Jesus' professed disciples, and that he 
alone of his family was not at the cross ? It has 
been conjectured that at the time of the crucifixion 
Zebedee was dead. He may have been waiting then 
in some other world for the full manifestation of the 
Redeemer's love. Or possibly Zebedee may have 
lived for weeks and months after his two sons had 
followed Jesus, and after his wife also had gone up to 
Jerusalem to minister to the Master, and yet for some 
reason he may never have found occasion, or im- 
proved his opportunity, to appear with his family 
among the confessed disciples of Jesus Christ. 

There is only one clear notice of Zebedee in the 
New Testament, and that puts him before us in a not 
unfavorable light. When Jesus at the beginning of 
his public ministry was walking one day by the sea 
of Galilee, he called James and John, and they left 
their father with the hired servants in the boat, and 
followed him. Zebedee made no objection. He was 
willing they should go. We can see him in the 
boat, looking up at the sound of a call so strange 

92 



Zebcdce s Absence. 93 

from One who was already beginning to speak with 
authority, and saying not a word against it, though 
his sons left him to mend the broken nets, and went 
away over the hills with the wonderful stranger. 
Yet that silent acquiescence must have cost Zebedee 
something. His sons were full-grown, and capable of 
being very helpful in the boat. And Zebedee was 
growing old, and needed their help. Although he 
had hired servants, he must still go himself to the 
shore, and look after the boat ; and the lake must 
have seemed lonelier to him after his two sons were 
gone. Many a man since has let his sons follow 
some noble cause, although the call took them from 
himself, and changed all his plan of life for them. 

And Jesus who called James and John, we may be 
sure, could not fail to notice Zebedee's sacrifice when 
he let them go without a word. The Lord had not 
asked Zebedee also to go with them. The hard ways 
which he must tread with his disciples miglit have 
been too toilsome for the father of James and John. 
He may have been too old for that service. Jesus 
called to be his apostles comparatively young men. 
They would have erelong work to do exhaustive of 
muscle and nerve, as well as taxing their faitli. 
Jesus chose robust men in their vigor for his apostles 
and witness-bearers totlic world. But tliougli Jesus 
miglit not call a man like Zebedee to be an apostle, 
he did ask of him a disciple's sacrifice ; and Zebe- 
dee's still faithful, though lonelier work in the boat, 
with the hired servants, may have l)oen his pari of 
the service which Jesus desired of his disciples. 

We may reasonably suppose, moreover, that Zc^ho- 
dee, who could let his sons leave him and follow 



94 Christian Facts and Forces. 

Jesus, and who afterward suffered Salome his wife 
to go up with them to Jerusalem, must have been at 
least in a general way interested in their religion. 
He could hardly have kept on an indifferent specta- 
tor of the life and the work of the Nazarene which 
had cost his home so much. Even if not personally 
and openly a disciple he must have been pleased on 
the whole with his sons' new faith, and glad also to 
have his wife religious. And he was willing still to 
work faithfully for his family, and to pay the bills, 
whatever their religion might cost him. The apos- 
tles must have somebody to provide for their living 
expenses. Neither can we doubt that James and 
John, as they had opportunity, must have been in- 
terested in informing their father concerning the 
marvelous works, and more marvelous words of the 
new prophet whom they were beginning to know as 
indeed the Messiah. They would not have been 
true sons, had they not taken every opportunity to 
let Zebedee know what they had found in Jesus 
Christ. And it may have been through their word 
and influence that Salome their mother came after- 
ward to be known among the women who ministered 
to Jesus. 

Leaving all conjecture however one side, and 
thinking of Zebedee as favorably as we may, 
the single fact which appears from the New Testa- 
ment narrative is, that at no time after that first call 
of James and John is Zebedee seen with them among 
Jesus' disciples. His mother comes with the sons, 
worshipping him, but not the father. The family 
of Zebedee is never seen, all of them together, in any 
house where Jesus is, nor at the cross. And dropping 



Zebedees Absence, 



95 



all conjectures about the reasons of Zebedee's absence, 
I wish to speak further of this fact, which is too 
frequently repeated in the history of our churches, 
that often the family fails to appear before God 
in the church as one Christian family, and that 
usually it is not Salome, but Zebedee who is not 
there. This fact particularly in our Protestant 
churches challenges attention. It is not in accord- 
ance with Christianity. In one passage, it is true, 
Jesus taught that he came to make a division in 
families, to set even mother and daughter at variance ; 
but it is evident that Jesus looked upon such sepa- 
ration in families as an incidental, and sometimes 
unavoidable result of the preaching of his word, 
but not as the intended and proper result of the Gos- 
pel. When Jesus took the pains to go with his 
disciples to Cana of Galilee, and to manifest his glory 
for the first time in a human home, he showed how 
God in his purpose of redemption meant to bless 
and to use the family. Jesus evidently meant to 
save the family in his kingdom. And Christianity 
would be less than Judaism, if it should fail to make 
the family the unit of the church. For the Old 
Testament brought families as families under the 
law of God. They went up to offer sacrifices by 
families. No member of a Hebrew family thought 
of being absent from the paschal meal, and least 
of all the head of the household. The old dispen- 
sation was a salvation of men by families. This 
Old Testament religion of the whole household may 
have been indeed an outward and formal kind of 
salvation, a legalism rather than a religion ; but the 
point is that the salvation whicli was of the Jews, 



96 Christian Facts and Forces. 

externally at least, was a family affair, and a social 
salvation. And Christianity cannot be less than 
Judaism. It must be more, as it becomes a real 
salvation of families of men, and a redemption of 
the whole civil state in the kingdom of God. We 
must not forget that the Christian Testament closes 
with the sight of the city of God on earth. 

Jesus Christ, it is true, meets us individually, and 
gives us personally his commandment. His teach- 
ing still singles us out, and when in some solemn 
hour a soul is confronted with the divinity of Jesus 
Christ, it will seem to it as though it and its God 
were alone in the universe. Yet intensely personal 
as the Gospel certainly is, it is also the Gospel of the 
kingdom, and the Christian family is the true unit 
of the redeemed society. Infant baptism attests this 
fact, and we shall miss one whole side of revelation, 
from Moses to Christ, if we lose this view of the true 
religion as the covenant of God with the Christian 
family. 

Since then it is not according to Christianity that 
families should be divided in religion, but is in ac- 
cordance with Christianity that the family should be 
the living, organic unit of the kingdom of heaven, 
it follows that there must be something wrong some- 
where, if our Christianity is not composed of Chris- 
tian families, or, in other words, if in our appHcation 
of the Gospel we bring in Salome, and leave Zebedee 
out. There is something contrary to Christ's inten- 
tion in such a state of religion in the world. And 
if our religious faith and life be the true thing, the 
real thing, the absolutely good thing, which we be- 
lieve it to be, there is no reason why any man of us 



Zebedces Absence, 97 

should be content to let the religion of the family be 
monopolized by his wife and children. 

Even in the pagan religions, in the old Roman 
home, the images of the gods were set in the com- 
mon room, and not hidden away in the women's 
apartments. Christianity would prove itself to be a 
religion less powerful than some pagan superstition, 
if it should lose a large proportion of men from its 
grasp. It will not always do this, for Jesus was the 
Son of man, the Man of men. 

When however I would go further, and locate the 
trouble, or the breaks, in our present transmission of 
the power of Christ along the complex lines of family 
and social life, the exact points of failure are not always 
easy to find. 

I can imagine several reasons why Zebedee may 
have been absent from the place where Jesus might 
be found, when I think of the reasons why some- 
times only the mother of Zebedee's children is to be 
seen now in the church, or at the prayer meeting. 
And the reasons are not altogether faults on one side. 
Indeed we can never be sure that we have found out 
the wrong in another until we Iiave first looked for 
tlie wrong in ourselves. If James and John had mis- 
intcr[)rcte(l Jesus to tlieir fatlier, or if Salome wliose 
family pride at first seemed to be a considerable part 
of her religion, had given him sonu^ lianl idea of 
what following the Master meant, Zebedee might 
thereby have been led to toil on by himself in the 
boat, when, had he only known, and gone once for 
liimself to see Jesus Christ, he might have come bark 
to his nets with a light in his heart that wonKl have 



98 Christian Facts and Forces. 

lighted up the Tvhole long nights for him as he went 
fishing on Galilee. 

We have reason enough to inquire whether we are 
giving to men such report of our Master and Lord 
as must command their consent. We know — if we 
have ears to hear the thoughts of men's hearts we 
cannot help knowing — that a great many Zebedees 
now-a-days are not to be found in professed disciple- 
ship because of a certain passive unbelief which has 
settled upon them. There is, on their part, at least, 
a felt inability to believe some things which are com- 
monly held as Christian beliefs. And ot'er-belief in 
the pulpit has had something to do in provoking un- 
belief just outside the church. Over-statement at 
least of beliefs has had a tendency to produce unbe- 
lief in many minds. And that unbelief lies like a 
fog-bank around our churches, not active and vehe- 
ment, a storm which might blow itself away, but an 
atmosphere heavy with doubt, and cold. I have 
just intimated that a natural reaction of over-belief 
in men's minds is unbelief. Let me not, however, 
seem for a moment to forget that in Christianity 
there is commanding truth. There are revealed 
truths to be studied, and to be thought out in all 
their logical deductions to the utmost power of our 
understandings. Systematic education in divine 
truths is a part of the work of the church to be begun 
with its children, and to be continued to the end of 
old age. But all the truth which is to be studied by 
the disciples as they follow Christ, and which may be 
learned in ever larger and happier meanings in the 
course of Christian discipleship, is not to be forced 



Zebedees Absence. 99 

upon men in a body of divinity as a condition of 
their discipleship. The first and main thing for men 
to discover and to own is whether they are willing to 
let the Lord Jesus Christ master their character and 
their conduct. There are many doctrines of the 
church, and corollaries of the Gospel, which they can 
more profitably study within his church after they 
have settled that main proposition of Christianity for 
themselves. 

Yet I knew a man who was, I believe, a devout man, 
and who throughout his life had been a cheerful sup- 
porter of the church — and what report of Jesus 
Christ did the church, with which through his wife 
he was connected, bring to that man in order that he 
also might come to Jesus in its communion ? It gave 
him a confession of faith which had been cast in the 
heat of the Unitarian controversy, all the parts of 
which had been soundly riveted together, and which 
then had been left for all future generations as the 
faith once delivered to the saints. The Apostle 
James would hardly have comprehended all of its 
technical phrases; the Apostle Peter might have 
found in it more things hard to be understood tliau 
he read in the epistles of Paul his beloved brother; 
and Paul himself with his trained Rabbinical intel- 
lect might possibly have so interpreted it as to bo 
able to accept its reasoned dogmas, while Joiin niiglit 
have asked why in so complete a compendium of 
Christianity his one word " God is love," and, '' LittU^ 
children love one another," had been left out. r>ut 
that was the witness of that church {o (Iia( man of 
the doctrines of the Divine One who 8j)ake not as the 
scribes, and who went about doing good. Not one 



lOO Christian Facts and Forces. 

article or word of it did that Zebedee of whom I 
speak openly deny ; only while Salome went to the 
Lord's table, he kept quietly on mending his nets. 
He too has gone now to receive, I trust, his first com- 
munion in that world where Christ promised to drink 
the cup anew with his disciples, and where Jesus 
himself may say to him in his simple divine way, 
as once he said of old, " Ye have done it unto me ; " 
and, " This do in remembrance of me.'' My brethren, 
these days in which our lives are cast are times of 
great possibility for the true church of the real Christ. 
These are days in which men, a great many honest 
men, would rather believe than not believe. The 
powers that have come into competition with Christi- 
anity in the work of saving society are seen to be 
failing. Upon all thoughtful men the conviction is 
forcing itself that some thoroughly honest and com- 
manding religion is needed to govern this world, and 
to prevent modern life from sinking swiftly into the 
hell of its own lusts and lies. The hour is most op- 
portune for simple and sincere witness to Jesus Christ. 
Oh fools and blind, if we waste this hour of the Son 
of man in saving our truths and our pride of opin- 
ion, when a world in its sins waits to be saved in the 
name of our Christ ! There are men, and women 
too, who do not believe because in their hard lot and 
struggle the kingdom of heaven has not been brought 
near enough to them by their employers for them to 
see how it belongs to them also, and not to the higher 
classes only. There are men who do not believe 
because they have not found our Christianity going 
before them in the way, and compelling them to 
honor it, wherever there is a wrong to be made right, 



Zebedee s Absence, loi 

a soul to be helped, a fair wage to be given, a debt to 
be paid, a devil to be cast out, or a home to be filled 
with the Holy Ghost. 

There was Zebedee trying to earn an honest living 
by hard work. And he w^as willing to let James and 
John go, and live for something better. He was 
willing to let Salome go and look after them on the 
way to Jerusalem. But if they had come back from 
Jesus Christ disputing among themselves, and calling 
each other hard names, looking with suspicion at 
each other, and denouncing each other, because they 
could not understand alike some word of their 
Lord, and forgetting all about the poor Galileans, 
and the lame, the halt, and the blind, whom they 
had said Jesus had come to save, — do you suppose 
Zebedee would have joined their church ? 

While we may not always justify ourselves, we can- 
not, however, let any Zebedee off vvathout having 
somewhat also to say to him, if he persists in keep- 
ing to his boat while his wife and children go and 
find Jesus. Even if we do sometimes make clumsy 
and cumbrous work of our testimony to Christ, Zebe- 
dee has heard enough of Jesus to know that Christ 
is infinitely nobler than we, and worthy of a man s 
whole soul. I do not care to speak now of the 
obviously wrong courses or the evil things whicli 
keep men away from the family religion and tlio 
clmrch. I will only suggest tliat possibly Zebodoo 
was too old a man, when Jesus brouglit the rest of 
his family into liis disciplesliip, to feel that lie could 
make any groat cliango, or go so far as Jerusalem. 

I want to speak, however, particularly of the way 
a man will sometimes be holdeii by a oue-sidetl exag- 



I02 Christian Facts and Forces, 

geration of some good quality in him. I want to 
point out what seems to me the frequent one-sided- 
ness of manhood in your unbehef. For instance, 
some man of us will say to himself, " I must be 
honest with my own thoughts, I will not be tempted to 
make-believe more than I believe/' And you ought 
not. True godliness cannot begin with any intellec- 
tual jugglery. But the mental honesty upon which 
you rely is not the simple and easy thing which you 
may think. It is vastly easier to be honest with 
dollars or stocks in one's hand, than it is with 
thoughts and desires in one's heart. Real honesty 
of mind requires a thorough combination of many 
virtues and habits, and among them, and above all, 
it requires a genuine manly humility. Indeed I do 
not believe it to be possible for a man to have a proud 
mind and an honest mind at the same time. Our 
reason is too feeble a spark, and the mystery of things 
too infinite, for us to think and question except as 
little children. And Jesus' call was, " Come, be my 
disciple." Then again any one-sidedness of life must 
throw a man out of right relation or fair position 
towards some truth. It is quite possible for us to 
stand so closely under one influence, or so habitually 
in one relation of life, that we may become incapable 
of large, roundabout vision. The other evening I 
wanted to know if the sky were clear, and I looked 
up, and saw over me a black sky. I supposed the 
stars were hid. But I was standing under an electric 
light. "When I walked on, and looked up again, the 
stars came out. There is a man who is living under 
the light of his one science. And it is honest, white 
light. But in it he loses sight of the whole heavens. 



Zebedee s Absence, 103 

He needs to go further on in his life, and, not to 
quench his science, but to widen the circle of his 
experience until he too can see the ancient stars 
again. Or here is a man who is living in the light 
of his professional study, a lawyer, a physician. He 
sees some things in a good light ; and he wants to 
see everything else in the same light. Talk to him 
about spiritual truths, and he wants you to prove 
them to a jury, or demonstrate them as you would 
anatomy. And very likely that man will not receive 
the passing prophet's word, so long as he stands still 
in that habit and position. He too needs to step out 
from under his own blinding light, in order that he 
maj^ gain faith's larger vision. May be he is a young 
man playing at life, and fooling with all knowledge. 
Let him begin to live in earnest, if he wants to know 
in truth. Let a man be more than a man of busi- 
ness, more than a man of science, more than a man 
of professional habit of mind. Let him live in an 
ever widening experience of life. Let him marry, 
make him a home, and work to provide for it ; let 
him meet with the needed enlargement of himself 
every child that God gives him. Let him not only 
go to his office, his laboratory, or his books, and 
think ; but let him stop by his hearth, and look into 
the life of trust and love and hope, in which he lives 
as a man, and there let him think. Let him look 
love in the face, and think. Let him look death in 
the eye, and think. Let him in the long years look 
at the empty places by his side, and the remembered 
faces of tlie children whom lie has lost, and lliink. 
Let liim think, honestly as a man may, earnestly as 
a man can ; but let him think as a man, and not as 



104 Christian Facts and Forces. 

a lawyer ; let him think as a man, and not as a 
scientist ; let him think as a man, and not as a scribe. 
Let him think as a man, having within him the 
spirit of a man, and praying for the Spirit of God 
whose thought must be the ultimate truth of all 
things without. Let him think as a man must think 
when his soul rises within him in its divinity of 
conscience and its immortal desire ; let him think too 
of the larger, nobler, holier self, which he might have 
been. 

And to such thought of life into which the whole 
lieart as well as the whole mind has grown, — such 
thought deep as love, true as spirit, honest as con- 
science, — let the Christ of these Gospels come. " Every 
one that is of the truth heareth my voice.'' Let the 
Christ of the Gospels come to you, — not our report 
of him, not the Christ of the creeds, but the Christ 
whom such thought of life may find in the Gospels, 
meeting all its conviction of truth and sense of need 
with the words of eternal life ; — and then, if no sin 
breaks the vision, if no habit of indecision puts aside 
the task, in this thought of life and of God, and with 
the disciples' trembling confession upon your lips, 
receive in remembrance of Christ the simple emblems 
and assurance of the kingdom of heaven. 



IX. 
THE CHRISTIAN EEVELATION OF LIFE. 

" glitir t!)m sftall It xthtKlzti i\)z UkiUBS om, bjom li^ BLorir Izsus 
sr}Kll sIk^ ixiilft lf)£ inatS of ^iB mouti^, anlJ iriitig to Ttousfitig 16^ matti- 
totalioTX of ])is romiit^." — 2 Thess. ii. 8. 

In a passage in ^' Modern Painters '^ John Ruskin 
reminds us of the delight which we are wont to ex- 
perience in view of a bright distance over a compar- 
atively dark horizon. At sunrise, beyond some line 
of purple hills, we have seen the sky become a great 
space of light, and through the shadows of the night 
which were still lingering in the valley, and clinging 
to the face of the rocks, we have looked into the 
dawn. Or at evening we have gazed out over the 
gloomy sea, and seen the restless ocean breaking 
upon the horizon in a line of troubled waves against 
the bright, quiet sky. 

In the Bible we are always looking over a fore- 
ground in shadow into a bright distance. In the Old 
Testament prophecy the waste and tumult of history 
were seen against the far Messianic glory. However 
bleak and barren the earthly prospect, the sky be- 
yond was a glory of the Lord. In the New Testa- 
ment the Apostles have learned to see all wickedness 
of the world horizoned by the manifestation of the 
coming of the Lord. And in truthful Christian 
vision these two aspects of human life and our world- 
history should bo viewed together. It were ])artial 

105 



io6 Christian Facts and Forces, 

and false vision to separate the two. If we have 
been compelled to observe the evil of the world 
around us, we need to look on until we can see its 
darkness immediately beneath the brightness of the 
Lord's presence. If we must see just before us some 
hard way, some dark waste of life, all fissured, 
gloomy, and forlorn, we need to gaze steadily on, and 
to behold the near foreground against its background 
of some divine light and peace. We never have the 
full, large vision until we do. And on the other 
hand we must not shrink from any knowledge of 
the evil of the world. Faith must have open eyes 
for the worst facts of human life. If some boat were 
stranded amid the angry waves, and men were shout- 
ing for present help, it were idle and cowardly for 
us to stand gazing into the far evening peace. The 
good shepherd will go seek the lost sheep on the 
mountain-side, and not wait for the coming dawn. 
There is a prospect and a glory for us to contemplate 
beyond all the evil of the world, and there is a work 
also for us to do in the midst of the sins of the world. 

The knowledge, then, of the sin which exists in 
human life, and also the heavenly prospect, — a quick 
sense of the present evil, and some vision of the man- 
ifestation of the presence of the Lord, — these two be- 
long together, these must be made part and portion 
of one and the same Christian view of life. 

Observe how Jesus always seemed to see both as- 
pects of our life. Those woes of his Gospel are heard 
breaking beneath its calm blessings. The sin of the 
world was an ever-present fact to Jesus ; but he saw 
it all set in the holy love of God. Because he saw 
the darkness against the eternal light, the restless- 



The Christian Revelation of Life, 107 

ness beneath the heavenly peace, he could at once 
condemn sin and rejoice over it. This same double 
aspect of human history is constantly kept before us 
in the book of Revelation. We hear the confused 
shouts of the warriors ; we see the dead bodies lying 
in the streets of the great city ; we behold still an- 
other beast coming up out of the earth ; but also 
there is a sound as of a great voice from heaven, 
there is that sea of glass mingled with fire, and them 
that come victorious from the beast, standing by the 
glassy sea, having harps of God ; and when all the 
woes of history are over, in the world's far, bright 
background, is that vision, of which we never tire, of 
the light clear as crystal of the holy city coming down 
out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. 

A similar juxtaposition of these two aspects of 
human life characterizes the chapter of St. Paul's 
epistle from which I have taken our text. It is in 
some respects an obscure passage. We do not know 
exactly of what St. Paul was thinking when he wrote 
this description of the man of sin, and of some hin- 
dering power. But it is clear that he saw this double 
aspect of life, the darker foreground, and the bright 
distance, the mystery of iniquity still working, and 
the manifestation of the coming of the Lord. And 
our text comes still closer to the necessary relation of 
these two, and discovers the law by Avliich the mani- 
festation of the presence of Christ follows the rov- 
qlation of the man of sin. The revelation of sin is 
necessary for its judgment. As soon as the man of 
sin becomes revealed, then follows liis dostructiou 
in tlio brightness of the manifestation of tlu^ T.ord. 
When wo see sins rapidly revealing tliemsolves, 



io8 Christian Facts and Forces. 

we know that the hour of their destruction draws 
nigh. Things often have to grow worse in order 
that they may be better. Evil must come to full 
revelation in order that it may be consumed. Let 
us think of this more closely. 

Such has been the law of the revelation and de- 
struction of evil in history. We can discover this 
principle of the divine judgment at a glance when 
we survey great historic masses of sin. Consider for 
example the sin of Babylon and its destruction. 
When her abominations were full, God's judgment 
brought all her pomp, and the noise of her viols, 
down to hell. It was not over Babylon in the wanton 
beginnings of her iniquities, but over Babylon the 
great, that the mighty voice was heard proclaiming, 
" Babylon is fallen, Babylon the great is fallen." So 
was it of those two Romes, the pagan and the medi- 
aeval Rome. The Goths and Vandals were let loose 
from the quiver which Providence held in the right 
hand of its power, when the vices of a decayed 
civilization had filled up the cup of wrath which was 
held steadily, until it was full, in the other hand of 
God's providence. And the papal corruption was 
ready to be revealed, and ripe for destruction, when 
Luther sounded his appeal to the nobles of the 
Christian nation. God's day of judgment follows 
the revelation of the man of sin. What availed the 
hesitating voice of some solitary New England divine, 
or the words of the Spirit to John Woolman among 
the scattered Friends, to check the growing system of 
slavery in this country? Both North and South 
were making money by letting it alone. And our 
fathers laid the keels of the slave-ships, and the 



The Christimi Revelatio7i of Life. 109 

wages of that sin found their way back to Northern 
ports. But all the while slavery was growing up 
under the law of God's judgment. Whether the tree 
bear good fruit or evil, Providence does not make 
haste to shake the branches, or to lay the axe at the 
root, until the fruit be ripe. Jesus in the parable 
suffered the vine-dresser to give the fig-tree, that had 
been barren for three years, a fourth probation before 
he should cut it down. Providence lets the wheat 
and the tares grow together until the harvest. And 
when at last that man of sin in this country was fully 
revealed, the compromises which had restrained the 
full growth and revelation of slavery being taken 
away, — then came the hour of its destruction in the 
manifestation of the glory of the Lord. 

Such is the moral law of progress in history ; we 
behold iniquity brought to revelation, and then 
Christ's presence consuming it. There is always 
therefore reason for hope when we see some evil 
thing coming out of its concealments, and making 
its power felt with a more shameless impudence. 
Long ago a few prophets of humanity may have 
cried out against that hidden evil. And most respect- 
able citizens said, It is nothing. But God let it grow. 
It begins to trouble some class of men. Its baneful 
shadow creeps over some wliole section of civiHzed 
life. Its woes among men arc brought to revelation 
in the newspapers. Even commercial selfishness 
grows vaguely aware tliat something is going wrong. 
And then very likely people rush together and say, 
"We must do something," and the first things they 
do very probably make the evil worse and worse. 
But all the while it is growing and waxing worse 



iio Christian Facts and Forces, 

under the divine law of judgment. That evil thing, 
whatever it be, intemperance, the power of the saloon, 
or greed, or lust, or ominous monopoly, or social 
anarchy, if indeed it be growing worse, is but filling 
up its measure of iniquity in order that it may be 
revealed and consumed. Then when its woes have 
been heaped up beyond endurance, when its mystery 
of iniquity has worked itself out in our world of sin, 
it shall be revealed, and brought to nought by the 
manifestation of the coming of Christ among men. 

This law of divine judgment under which evil 
grows, and is doomed, is a reason for courage and 
hope in all Christian work. Something may have 
given you a moment's revelation of the man of sin 
in this city. You may have seen in some instance 
of dishonor or shame the mystery of iniquity which 
is now working along these streets. And by that 
glance, and moment of discovery of the sin of a city, 
you are thrown back in discouragement, and you are 
tempted to say, what is the use of our charity, or our 
feeble Christian endeavor against such powers of 
evil? Or in thinking some Christian thought, or 
trying to carry out some idea born of love, and there- 
fore of God, you may have run straight against some 
dead wall of indifference, or found some custom 
fortified against you, or some wrong method en- 
trenched in some good institution. And because 
rebuff'ed where you expected sympathy, rebuked 
where you asked for aid, or suspected as an alien 
where you went as a friend, you drop the work to 
which God sent you ; or, if you keep on, it is with a 
heartless persistence in your cause. 

But have you failed to look up and on until you 



The Christian Revelation of Life, 1 1 1 

saw some bit of God's sky at the end of your way ? 
Have you forgotten that in proportion as you come 
to a knowledge of any evil thing, in that same pro- 
portion you have reason to believe that it shall be 
revealed in its evil, and be consumed ? If it has 
discovered its sinfulness to us, if we are sure we have 
seen the wrong and harm of it, we can be equally 
sure that it will in its time be made manifest, that 
sooner or later whatever hinders its coming to revela- 
tion before the consciences and in the hearts of men, 
will be removed, and then it shall be consumed in 
the brightness of the Lord's coming. And is not this 
the reason why those men who really have seen evil 
things, and fought with all their might against the 
sins of the world, as a rule have been not only the 
bravest men, and the most self-sacrificing, the martyrs, 
the heroes, the reformers, but also the cheeriest, the 
most hopeful men? It is your indifferent man 
to-day, the man who does not lift a finger to take 
any burden oflf from men's shoulders, the man who 
has not the soul to commit himself against any 
wrong, who fears that the country is going to destruc- 
tion, as it might for all of him. But let a brave soul 
once be aroused to anything which is wrong, let him 
see it and know it as contrary to God, and untrue to 
tlie Spirit of his Christ, and then as he realizes its 
sinfulness and is forced to discover its ancient power, 
and its entrenched might even in Christian civih- 
zation, or in the church of God, — how ho will see 
also around it tlie glory of the manifestation of the 
coming of the Lord, and in that knowledge both of 
tlie evil and of the glory of his Lord, ho will keep 
his faith, and his hope, and his patience, and tliat 



112 Christian Facts and Forces. 

joy too in his work in which all good can be most 
divinely wrought. 

The same principle obtains with reference to our 
individual salvation. Sins one after another come 
to revelation in our lives, and, as they are revealed, 
will be consumed in some manifestation of Christ, if 
indeed our hearts are Christian. They are revealed 
to us in their sinfulness in order that they may be 
destroyed. Under this principle we gain a clear view 
of what a man^s conversion may be. He has gone 
on in a life which was not satisfactory to his con- 
science or heart. Something happens to bring that 
dissatisfaction with his position or his conduct to 
revelation. He sees that it is not true character. 
He sees a larger, more generous, altogether diviner 
self rising before his present self, rebuking it, con- 
demning it, ready to consume it as by the presence 
of Christ. That is a crisis for any man or woman. 
And if we disown the man of sin in us, our false 
self, partner with all the sin of the world, and own 
the Christ-self, which may be our real and eternal 
self, companion with the angels of God, then we are 
converted, then we have passed from death unto life, 
then we are saved children of God. And every time 
any sin comes to revelation before conscience in our 
hearts, then is God^s opportunity of grace for us. 
Some ancestral sin, some inherited evil disposition, 
may have been latent in us, almost unknown by us, 
for years and years. And then in some flare of 
temptation we see it, and read the mark of the beast 
upon it. It is judged ; it is condemned already in 
the revelation of it ; it is consumed, God be praised ! 
in the brightness of his coming. That sin may not 



The Christian Revelation of Life, 1 1 3 

be a very gross sin capable of great beastliness. 
When it reaches its full measure, and is revealed, it 
may not prove to be a vehement passion, or devour- 
ing lust, but only some little meanness, some small 
selfishness, some slight untruthfulness, some dullness 
and bluntness of being to noble or generous things. 
Only a little sin ! But the least sin of our hearts 
would be great as a shadow over the whole heavens, 
if we should think of it as imputed to the character 
of Jesus Christ. And at last we see it. That we 
know was ungenerous. That is not right. It is an 
evil thing, wholly contrary to God. Then let it be 
consumed in the presence of Christ. That revelation 
of its sinfulness is our time of grace. In that dis- 
closure of it the Spirit is saying to us, " Behold, 
now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day 
of salvation." And there is one benign pecuharity 
about this law of the destruction of sin througli its 
self-revelation in the Lord's presence. The purer 
and nobler the character grows, the sooner does the 
mystery of iniquity which now Avorkotli come t(^ 
revelation in it. Tlie more a soul is flooded \\\\\\ 
God's light, the sooner is everytliing of this earth 
earthy in it marked for destruction. The sin of tlie 
world whicli in tliat criminal was revealed in an 
awful deed, and brought to its judgnuMit, is the same 
sin of the world whicli that Christian child was 
quick to recognize in an evil passion, and whoso 
falsehood and liatred long cro this may have been 
consunuHl l)y \\\<\ brit^htness of Christ's presence in 
some mature and consiHTaii^l life. And tlio progress 
upwards is one of i^vtT-increasing ((uickness of per- 
ception of evil, and power over sin. Life's slowest, 

8 



114 Christimi Facts and Forces, 

hardest work is usually at the bottom. We climb, 
and toil ; the saints seem lifted up, and borne by- 
unseen hands towards the gates of heaven. 

Such is the benign law of growth in grace ; but 
its alternative cannot be escaped. If the man of sin 
in us is revealed, and we will not let him go, w^hat 
then? The sin must be punished. That is sure. 
God cannot hold heaven safe in one hand, and let 
the sin of this world escape from the other hand. 
The man of sin must be destroyed. That is the inev- 
itable consequence of the omnipotence of righteous- 
ness in the universe. And if we cling to the man 
of sin, how can God himself separate us from its 
fate ? We must go where the sin goes, if our hearts 
cleave to the sin. We must fall where the sin falls, 
if we hold fast to it. You know that is so in this 
present world. Why should it be any different in 
any other world ? Every man here clinging close to 
his sin, goes with his sin, is hurried down the prede- 
termined course, and meets the certain fate of that 
sin. You see that happening with men who cling 
to deadly sins. A crime will come to its hour of 
revelation, and carry the criminal with it to its doom. 
All dishonesties go straight and sure towards ruin, 
and eventually carry the defaulters with them. The 
decreed course of a lust in this moral universe is 
marked by the signs, earthly, sensual, devilish, and 
the end is death. Down that course the man who 
clings to his lust has to go. If a sin comes from 
hell, and reveals itself to be infernal, and a man 
gives himself up to it, then to the hell reserved for 
that sin he must go with it. 

This law that whithersoever sins go, they take their 



The Christian Revelation of Life, 115 

men with them, is not only true of deadly sins at 
whose deadly consequences we shudder ; but it is the 
law of the working of all sin. It holds true of every 
evil thing. If we are unkind or cross, we have to 
live in the atmosphere which that ill-temper creates. 
If we are ungenerous, we have to dwell in the 
cell which miserliness inhabits. If we will cherish 
small, churlish views of our duties to our fellow- 
men, we shall walk all our days between the dead 
walls where such dispositions find their beaten track. 
We can often see how men are living in some small, 
dismal world, because they choose the company of 
some petty sins, or are kennelled with ill-favored 
habits, when, if they would only break loose, and be 
the Lord's freemen, they might walk forth in large, 
helpful, and sunny lives. And many and many a 
time they may have seen their sin revealed, — all its 
uncouthness and meanness mirrored for a moment in 
some Christlike character which passed by them along 
its nobler life. Do we not remember that hour, it 
may have been years ago, — do we not know that 
moment, it may have been to-day, — when we saw 
something wrong in our mode of life, somctliing 
imperfect in our thought of ourselves revealed? It 
came clearly out — what we are, and are doing — and 
just above it, a luminous revelation, what we miglit 
be, and ought to do. We are better or worse for that 
liour. For remember that tliis law of the revelation 
of sin unto judgment works downwards, as a law of 
death, in precisely the same way in which it works 
upwards as alaw of life. On tlie one lian(l,l]u^ more 
prompt to give up anything false and evil a soul is, 
the quicker the sin of the world conies to revelation 



1 1 6 Christian Facts and Forces, 

in conscience, and the less is the smoke of the tor- 
ment of its destruction in the brightness of the 
presence of the Lord. On the other hand, the less 
willing a human soul is to repent, and be converted 
from any sin, the duller grows the power of the soul 
to perceive its sinfulness, and the severer becomes 
the necessity of its judgment. Hence, even if we be 
finally saved from the sin unto death, is the harm of 
putting off, and putting off, the things which we 
know we ought to do and to be. Hence the urgency 
of the Gospel to us now. Hence the pressing reason 
w^hy some of you ought to take your position at once 
and with decision in that circle of light, and commu- 
nion of all the saints on earth and in heaven, to 
which your parents brought you in your baptism. 
In the open and clear discipleship of Jesus Christ, 
where the Christ of God stands in the midst of all 
who are of the truth, and the glory of God is round 
about him, — there is the one place in all this world 
of sin and death for us to be found, — there our lives, 
so earth-stained, and so marred and broken, may be 
brought to perfect revelation, and the man of sin be 
consumed from them in the manifestation of the 
presence of our Lord. 



X. 

EECONCILIATION WITH LIFE. 

" Tflthtii^tltss 3E must ixialfe to-itias, anJj to-morroki, anil tf)£ ba^ £oI- 
lobDin^: for it ta.mtot ^z IJat a propf)jet ji^risft out of JtrusaUm." — 
Luke xiii. t^Z- 

Sooner or later we all of us have to learn to say 
those words, '' I must ; " and our whole character, 
good or evil, saved or lost, will depend upon the way 
in which we learn to say, " I must.'' How we should 
learn to say " I must," is the subject of this morning's 
sermon. The tone and temper in which we become 
able to use those words may indicate a moral differ- 
ence between men great as was the separation be- 
tween the desperate Jew in the time of the calamity 
of Jerusalem, and the Son of man when his hour 
was come. 

" Nevertheless I must walk to-day, and to-morrow, 
and the day following." Not to the Son of man 
alone, but to every man there come inevitable days 
of life. No human will can escape the necessity of 
saying at some hour, " I must." Even Napoleon lias 
his St. Helena. We say, " I will ; " and the next day 
find ourselves saying, ^' I nuist." Cu)d never sullrrs 
us to say the one for many hours without cc>iu{)ollini^' 
us to say the other. Thoughtlessly wo go our way, 
and look up to find ourselves facing the inevitable. 
There it is, steadily confronting us. It is lianl as 
the face of a precipice. We cannot go arimnd it. 

117 



1 1 8 Christian Facts and Forces, 

We cannot climb over it. We must stand still before 
it. There is no word of our English speech which 
we more cordially dislike than this same short word 
mu^i. We will not brook it when spoken to us by 
other men. Any friendship would be broken by it. 
Love knows nothing of it. Liberty consists in re- 
fusing to speak it when kings proclaim it, or any 
foreign might commands it. Men have died rather 
than yield to it. Yet nature every day compels us 
to say it, and hard providences often wring it from 
broken hearts. There is a strange contradiction be- 
tween our vital instinct of freedom and this inevita- 
bleness of so much of human life. AVe do not recog- 
nize this variance between constitution and necessity 
in other objects which have their appointed places 
in the order of nature. We are aware of no contra- 
diction to the nature of matter when we say the 
molecules of oxygen and hydrogen must combine in 
certain definite proportions. It would be no insult 
to a star to declare, it must keep true time over our 
meridian. Nature is one ordered compulsion. But 
from the first impulse of infant consciousness our 
human nature rebels against inevitableness. The 
child always has to be taught the habit of obedience. 
There is some spiritual power in us evidently created 
for a free life unrestrained by outward compulsions. 
Sin is wild outbreak of free-will, and its curse. But 
the principle of rebellion against the power of nature 
over us, and our objection to any outward control, is 
a constitutional principle of human nature. It is 
born in us, and we can never be content to say, " I 
must," unless we can say in the same breath. " I 
will." 



Reconciliation With Life, 1 1 9 

Yet consider how large a portion of our daily life 
is put before us, and how much of our own person- 
ality is given to us under some form of necessity ; 
and how large consequently is the w^ork of recon- 
ciliation to be accomplished, if it be possible, between 
the I wills, and the I must, of our lives. There is, 
to begin with, the must of heredity. We cannot 
vacate our inherited individuality and choose another, 
and a happier. We have to accept ourselves as we 
were born. " Which of you by taking thought can 
add one cubit unto his stature ? '' There is a must 
for every human face and form in every looking- 
glass. There is sometimes an awful inevitableness 
in the laws of heredity. "Your mother was an 
Hittite, and your father an Amorite.'' " Thus saith 
the Lord God unto Jerusalem : Tliy birth and thy 
nativity is of the land of the Canaanite ; the Amo- 
rite was thy father, and thy mother was an Hittite." 
So the prophet Ezekiel explains the false Israel and 
his apostasy. 

Besides this primal necessity of our birth, there 
are the fixed grooves of natural law in which 
our lives must run, and all the forms of circum- 
stance to which our individuahties nmst be fitted. In 
tlie midst of these physical, industrial, and social 
necessities our space of si)irit and freedom seems 
small as the cage of a bird, and hard sometimes as 
tlie treadmill of a beast of burdiMi. Every day, every 
hour, has its limitalioiis and thraldom of spirit for 
us. The dawn of day in which the cand(\^s birds 
sing, brings renewal of burdens to nuMi. The round 
of cares nuist be run through again, it is for us, 
"You must," "you must," every step we take, every 



I20 Christian Facts and Forces, 

effort we make. And this little earth still holds us 
as in a vice. We can see the heavens, and know 
that there must be wondrous spectacles, scenes mag- 
nificent beyond all comparison, in those distant 
constellations, but we cannot follow our thoughts to 
the nearest planet ; we have not yet the freedom of 
the skies. Even our arts mock us by disclosures 
of things which we cannot touch, or handle, or own. 
Photography reveals stars which cannot be seen even 
in the telescope. The mighty universe opens around 
us ; but we are tethered to one world, and must be 
content with a dwelling-house, and a daily beat of 
duties, on this insignificant earth until we die. 

In addition to this general and constant compul- 
sion of the world upon our free spirits, to which we 
have become so used that only in thoughtful mo- 
ments do we rebel against it, there are sent to us 
hours when it seems like death to have to say, " I 
must ; " — that hour when our hope and all its bright 
colors broke like a bubble, and we knew in cold 
disenchantment that it must be so ; that hour when 
the bearer of evil tidings stopped at our door, and 
a few hurried words subjected our hearts to the in- 
evitable ; — those hours when we must enter the vacant 
home, and live on in memory where we would hear 
a present voice, and see a vanished face. Every 
grave means, " You must." 

And there is a law of death working in these 
members. There is an inevitableness of change and 
decay witnessed even by our pulse-beatings. And 
by all our immortal instincts we resent it. The law 
of death is something foreign to us. It is a bondage 
of spirit to live in the fear of death. We were not 



Reconciliation With Life. 121 

made to cease to be. Pain is an insult to the spirit. 
Sickness is humiliation of the soul. Death is the 
triumphing as of an enemy over us. 

I have been expressing thus our common feeling 
of irreconcilableness to much that seems inevitable 
in human life. In order that we may learn to say 
" I must" in any true and free way, we should look 
more intently into the nature of this great compul- 
sion which is laid upon us all. What is it? It 
wears ofttimes a face of fate. Is that its only and 
eternal countenance? Is there any thoughtfulness 
for us behind it ? What or whose is this will which 
must be done on earth as in heaven ? Our tone and 
temper when we say ^^I must/' will depend very 
vitally upon our belief concerning the character of 
the Power whose grasp is the inevitableness of human 
life. To what voice, and to what voice alone, in the 
universe may a man answer, " I must,'' and " I will " ? 
For this also is true that there can be no reconcilia- 
tion for us with the inevitable, no happy harmony 
of our spirits with our circumstances and our neces- 
sities, until in some way we have learned to answer, 
" I will," from within our own free hearts, whenever 
tliat Voice from without speaks to us its inevitable, 
"You must." The two voices from without and 
from witliin must become one, keyed to the same 
note and making one music, before life can be har- 
mony and peace. 

My friends, the ways in whicli men liave tried to 
liarmonizc^ these voices are familiar to us, and wo 
know what discords liavo been left in human life. 
We know too well wliat indifferent success we have 
often had in seeking to make one music of our 



122 Christian Facts and Forces. 

necessities and our desires of life. We know that 
every way except one of the many which have been 
tried has failed. We can hope to gain nothing by 
setting our lives to old tunes which have not worn, 
and which never were happy efforts, even when mas- 
ter-spirits tried them. Some tunes for Ufe long ere 
this have been played, and played out, in human 
history. Stoicism was one, with its monotony of 
suppressed emotion. Buddhism was another with 
its want of vital movement, and its one repeated note 
of passionless resignation. Epicureanism has been 
another, with its light notes, suited only to life's 
lightest passages, and its want of voice and har- 
mony for life's deepest motives, and its saddest, 
holiest hours. These, and all variations of these 
tunes for human life, have been played and repeated 
over and over again, and not one nor all prove to be 
accompaniment enough, true, and pure, and always 
fitted for the ever-changing movement, the depths 
and heights, the passion and the peace, of a human 
soul in this mortal life. 

I have noticed, also, that the men and women who 
still try to suit life's necessities to these modes and 
fashions of reconciliation with it, never persist long 
in any single method which may for awhile seem to 
them sufficient. They are stoical, or light-minded, 
resigned or rebellious, passive slaves to life, or 
violent non-conformists, by fits and starts, as they 
meet now this, now that, inevitableness of their des- 
tinies. They have learned no secret of deep and 
abiding reconciliation with nature, fate, or provi- 
dence. They have their moods, not their victory over 
life and death. Perhaps most often they succeed for 



Reconciliation With Life, 123 

a season in chilling and hardening themselves 
against life. There are human hearts like our lakes 
in winter-time. The winds do not ruflfle the surface. 
The deep waters are not moved in grand waves. 
There is no pleasant ripple and play of feeling over 
them. There is thick ice above, and stillness beneath. 
So we may freeze ourselves into equanimity, and a 
heart encased with ice need not be troubled. Few 
men, however, can remain frozen in Stoic uncon- 
cern through all the seasons of this mortal life. And 
that is not life. Arctic isolation is not life. For this 
human hearts were not made. If the equanimity of 
a block of granite be the chief end of man, evolution 
marched towards its greatest failure when it pre- 
sumed to go beyond the age of primeval rock, and 
began the ascent of life to end in the human brain 
and the human heart; for the living soul cannot 
lie still under all influences as a dead stone. All 
ways but one of being reconciled to life have failed ; 
— how can we most clearly see, how can I help 
every young person find, that one way in which once 
a human soul like ours became reconciled to all 
things, in which human hearts have been joined 
in happy union to strong, eternal law, in whicli the 
word "must" has become to many a word of spirit 
and of life ? 

I might say that it is religion which does this 
blessed work; that I have seen religion reconciliui^ 
men and life ; and that religion has joined soul to 
life so liappily that henceforth no man can put tliein 
asunder. I miglit urge that only wlien we gain 
clear perception tliat every inevitable iliinij: is a 
divine thing, every word " You nmst" in our life a 



124 Christian Facts and Forces. 

word of God, only then, can we begin to answer 
with good heart, " I will." I might set in order the 
reasons for believing that beneath this whole appear- 
ance of inevitableness in human life and history 
there is a will of divine righteousness, and a heart of 
infinite love. When we feel the touch of the love of 
God in the hand of fate, our hearts can say through 
all our tears, "Thy will be done.'' I might urge 
further that our present life with its civilized temp- 
tations, and its polite lies of the devil, and its fashion- 
able demons of unbelief and unrighteousness, lays 
upon all true men an urgent necessity of realizing 
the presence of the living God on this earth, if in- 
deed we would keep the faith and the hope of a 
man's spirit amid the shams, and shames, and 
tumults of our world. 

I might urge you to try this religious way of 
reconciliation with life, to seek for some sign of God's 
presence, and to wait for some revelation of God's 
pure will, in all the events which come to you, and 
which you must meet in your way of life. But 
there is a nearer argument than this. There is 
clearer proof of this one true way of happy and 
harmonious life than even these evidences of our 
reason and conscience. It is shown to us — the true 
life, in its full strength, its noble harmony, and peace, 
is all revealed to us — so that a little child can respond 
to it, and men own its divine mastery, in the Christ 
of these Gospels. That was the life of perfect recon- 
ciliation with the world. There the flesh and the 
spirit, there the world and the soul, there the inevi- 
tableness of duty and of death, and the freedom of a 
Son in the Father's house, were perfectly at one, and 



Reconciliation With Life, 125 

never was there a moment's rift in the music of that 
Hfe, and all was one triumph and glory of man in 
God. When Jesus was only twelve years old, — 
before that age our wills have fallen out with duty, 
and we have begun to tug at life's restraints, — Jesus 
was found in the Temple, and in his boyhood he 
made that memorable answer which with other but 
half-understood sayings of the child Jesus his mother 
kept in her heart : '^ Wist ye not that I must be in 
my Father's house V Did you not know that I must 
be amid the things of my Father ? What mud be 
as his duty and his ministry was already Jesus' will 
of life. " I must " and " I will " strike one note in 
his diviner speech. When he said, " I must be about 
my Father's business," it was with no cheerless tone, 
with no heartless voice of resignation. It was his 
meat to do the will of Him that sent him. Know- 
ing this world to be God's world, and perceiving life 
in it to be God's will, what he must do was what he 
would do, and every necessity of his ministry was 
welcome as a messenger from God's presence. The 
tragic inevitableness of his life — that dark shadow 
which he saw stealing over his path long before the 
disciples noticed any sign of its approach — the need 
of his sufferings and death, which even wlien he 
went down Ids trial-way they could not understand 
or believe — the cruel necessity of his betrayal, and 
the crucifixion in a world of sin, which Jesus saw 
must needs be the cup which it was the Father's will 
not to let pass from him — all this was not oninigli to 
set his heart at strife with the way which to-day 
and to-morrow, and the day following, ho must wnlk, 
to make him cease to call God's ordained hour, '' niv 



126 Christia7i Facts and Foi^ces, 

hour/' or to go, eager and strong, to meet it. '' How- 
beit I must go on my way to-day and to-morrow, 
and the day following: for it cannot be that a 
prophet perish out of Jerusalem." Surely it is the 
same eager voice speaking now which had been 
heard years before in the Temple, saying, " I must 
be about my Father's business; only it is deeper 
now, and calmer in its triumph. In this obedience 
unto death the will of God which is to be done on 
earth and the \\dll of man are one and the same j)ure 
will. Jesus going up to Jerusalem, making the great 
mii^t of the eternal purpose of God for him his joy 
and victory of spirit, shows the one sure way in 
which every man of us may become reconciled to 
life ; and He stands in the Temple, commanding and 
serene, the Example and the Lord of all obedient 
spirits who, in doing God's will, have found them- 
selves ushered into an eternal power and peace. 

Some of you may not see now what that meant 
when Jesus said so royally, " I must walk to-day and 
to-morrow, and the day following," and, " We go up to 
Jerusalem." Some may feel as yet no need of under- 
standing how the Christ could say, '^ I must." And 
others of you, under hard trials, have been seeking 
in broken speech to repeat those words after Christ. 
None of us can yet say them perfectly. The martj^r 
singing amid the flames, the saint of God, left alone 
after father, mother, husband, children, perhaps all, 
have been taken from her — life's many blows spent, 
and death only waiting for her triumph, — knows 
something, yet knows but in part, what Jesus the 
Christ knew fully and for us all, when walking in 
his way to-day, and to-morrow, he did God's vrill, 



i 

i 



Reconciliation With Life, 127 

and going up to Jerusalem to be crucified fulfilled 
the work which had been given him of the Father. 

There are some present who through great troubles 
are trying to follow Christ in a grand Christlike 
manner up to Jerusalem. They are thankful that 
they did not wait until they had to go up to Jeru- 
salem where they must sufifer, before they had learned 
to walk towards their hour in some Christlike trust 
and peace of God. It is hard if we have to be in 
the way towards great duties and great troubles, and 
at the same time have to learn in what spirit only 
they can be met. Jesus might never have been able 
to say for a world's salvation, as he drank the cup, 
" Not as I will, but as thou wilt,'' had he not been 
led of God to say when he was twelve years old, " I 
must be about my Father's business." 

Others of you have not yet felt deeply the need of 
religious reconciliation with life through God ? Very 
well ; but you have needed it, and you do need it, 
although you may not yet see it or own it. Dis- 
satisfaction with things around us begins earlier 
than most of us can remember. Youth is always 
wanting a larger objective, — something it would love 
to do. And young persons not infrequently find 
themselves in what for want of more definite self- 
knowledge they call " a state of mind." You will 
never get to the root of that state of mind until you 
reach down to religion. You may put your discon- 
tent from you, reason it away, or laugh it down, or 
dance it off for the liour ; but tlie root of all dissatis- 
faction and discontent with self, and with one's sur- 
roundings and with one's prospects, never can be 
reached until wc go down to the will of God in our 



128 Christian Facts and Forces, 

soul's birth and our souFs mission, and make the dis- 
covery of that will for us, and the doing it, our chief 
aim and hope. No change in life's circumstances, 
no larger work, no happier outlook, will be enough. 
We ourselves need to be born again ; it is not our 
outward life that needs to be refashioned. There are 
young men who occasionally attend church, who are 
disgusted with certain ways of the world which they 
know, who perhaps have not always been the best 
that they should have been, and who have times of 
serious thought. They know that they cannot escape 
from any of the great commandments of a moral 
universe. In the laws of things some " You must," 
stands written over against every " I will " of untruth, 
or unholy lust. You must reap what you sow ; you 
must suffer for every wrong deed; you must be 
judged by what you are. All of us at times have 
realized this. Whenever we really think of it we 
know it. Yet there is something more, something 
nobler than fear of consequences, or dread of death 
and hell, in our hours of conscience and our moments 
of inward vision of better things. It is a time of the 
Spirit of God, whenever we become discontented with 
our lives, dissatisfied with ourselves. It is a great 
thing for us, and an opportunity of eternal life, 
whenever something which we see we ought to do, 
which we feel we must be, becomes full of attractive 
power over us ; when the thought of it, though we 
keep putting it off, will as often come back to us, and 
our hearts begin to feel the spell of it ; when though 
we turn our thoughts from it and would deny it, we 
find it there waiting again to greet and to reprove 
us at our first quiet moment ; when in the silence of 



Reconciliation With Life, 129 

the night it haunts our last waking thoughts, and, 
when we awake, in that same thought we are still 
with God. 

You know some of you what I mean. It has 
been your experience of religion. It is a genuine 
experience of religion so far as it goes. And when 
you submit to it, surrender to it, with an utter 
abandon of soul give up all to it, then its hour of 
blessing has come. When God says in your reason 
and your conscience, " You must," and in your heart 
you answer, " I will," the secret of life is opened — the 
true life of reconciliation is begun — religion has 
ceased to be a duty and become a delight. Although 
in feeble stammering tones, and as children having 
many things to learn, yet you have begun to say in 
the name of Christ, " I came forth from the Father," 
'' I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father 
that sent me;" and, " I go to the Father." 



XL 

THE GLORIFICATION OF LIFE. 

*' %\zvi 3E saitr, 1 \Kht laior^lr (it hzin, 3E f)a:b.e spmt m^ sixzix%^ for 
ttou^it, anlJ in iaiit : j^t 5uul2 mj ju^tr^mtnt is toitlj t^i 5^orJj, anJtr m^ 
kiork bits m2 (Scolr/' — Is. xlix. 4. 

This is a small world, and a human life occupies a 
very little space in it. This earth affords to man a 
mere foothold upon space, and each generation can 
cling to it but for an hour. Only a speck of matter 
upon the infinite expanse — as a mere boat upon the 
great ocean — is this world upon which the generations 
of men are crowded. You and I are insignificant. 
All the stars of heaven prove our littleness. The 
infinite mystery of the night, as we are wrapt about 
by the heavens and their silences, humbles our pride 
in our achievement of a day. " What is man, that 
thou art mindful of him ? and the son of man, that 
thou visitest him ? " Even if we put all outlying 
space from our thought, and would live upon our 
little world as though it were the universe, we are 
forced again to acknowledge our insignificance by 
the shortness of the time allotted to us on earth. 
We do not live long enough to achieve the lives 
dreamed of in our youth. AVe die with our work 
undone. Our lives are not necessary to the world. 
Some one is always waiting for our place. There 
are no vacant places in history, and there are so many 
of us. Humanity, the mother of us all, has more 

130 



The Glorification of Life, 131 

life and power always to bestow than there seems to 
be room enough upon this earth to receive. No life 
reaches far into the world's future. We soon shall be 
forgotten, as our fathers before us. Our children 
wall mourn us awhile after we are gone, but they will 
live equal to their work without us. The tree by 
your door has longer life than yours ; the rock over 
which you climb exulting, was there ages before you 
stood upon it, and will be there ages after you are 
gone. And I said, ^^ I have labored in vain, I have 
spent my strength for nought, and in vain.'' Who 
of us at times, when we have felt our insignificance 
and the littleness of our lives here, has not said some- 
thing like that ? Even the greatest of men are but 
for their hour. You look out upon the ocean, and 
the waves flowing in catch the sunshine each for its 
little moment of iridescence, and if some wave far 
away, rising above others, flashes in your eye, you 
look again, and it too has sunk into the common, 
lustreless flood of water. This reflection of our 
earthly littleness, and our human insignificance, 
haunts our modern consciousness of life. Our 
science teaches it, and our literature reflects it, and 
enthusiasm dies beneath it. What is it to be a man ? 
What is it to live ? Nothing great. Nothing endur- 
ing. Only a few years' consciousness of the infinitely 
small. And with this sense of our earthly insignifi- 
cance there comes also a strange sense of isolation 
and loneliness. It seems as tliougli in our human 
littleness, and the briefness of our period here, avc were 
separated from tlio great sum of things, and cut c^fV 
from the glory of the whole creation. Tliero ni'o 
within us subtle sympathies of soul whicli seoiii lo 



132 Christian Facts and Foi'ces, 

bind us with universal nature, and to make us con- 
scious parts of the divine whole of things ; and this 
little atom of a world, upon which we ride, holds us 
aloof from the celestial spaces, and death soon breaks 
all personal union even with human life and destiny. 
There is something profoundly unnatural, some- 
thing contrary to our inner sense of life, in this felt 
isolation of our earth from the heavens, and this 
loneliness of our life upon it. Our personal, con- 
scious life of thought and love seems to be a brief 
emergence into some larger and diviner element of 
existence than we can measure. They tell us that 
the meteors which appear in our November skies are 
isolated little bodies, some of them probably no 
larger than a cherry-stone, which have been travers- 
ing space in darkness and separation, many of them 
computed to be over two hundred miles apart, isolated, 
cold, lifeless atoms of matter ; and at length, when 
their hour is come, they enter our atmosphere, and 
in our air they flash for an instant into brightness, 
are seen for a moment of glory, and then are dissolved 
forever. Are the souls of men, we wonder, only 
momentary flashes of being in some spiritual ele- 
ment? Do our souls, coming from the unknown, 
kindle for an instant into consciousness, and die ? 
Must we say of such a being, and such a life. It is 
nought ? So Prof. Clifford thought when he wrote 
beforehand his own epitaph : " I was not ; I lived ; 
I loved ; I am not." Yet never atom of matter, or 
created world, before the self-conscious soul of man, 
could write its own epitaph. "Man," said Pascal, 
" knows that he dies, and the universe knows noth- 
ing of the advantage it has over him." This know!- 



The Glorification of Life, 133 

edge which we have of death might mean more for 
us, if we could interpret it, than death itself. The 
being who can leave after him his own epitaph is 
able to do what no dissolving star can write upon 
the sky. He has some power of being, therefore, be- 
yond the stars. And that word, " I loved," written 
between the words, ^^ I was not,'' and " I am not,'' 
contradicts them both. For out of love preceding 
and eternal comes forth love ; and love once born in 
a human heart begins to live for eternity. 

In contrast to this oppressive sense of our human 
insignificance upon this infinitesimal earth, let us 
hasten to put the large and generous thought of life 
which glows in the consciousness of the chosen ser- 
vant of God. " Then I said, I have labored in vain, 
I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain ; 
yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my 
work with my God." As the servant of God man 
ceases to be for nought ; the life of man with the 
Lord becomes great. In our connection with this 
little world-atom we are as nothing, and we die ; but 
in our relation to the infinite God, who has room in 
his thought for all souls, we may possess the universe 
and be immortal. Man can never say, " My world," 
" my universe," " my truth," until he has first said, 
'' My God." To seek to say, " My world," without 
saying, " My God," is sin, and Adam's fall. Only as 
the Servant of God, can man possess all things, and 
be as God. 

The Servant of God in some passages of Isaiah's 
prophecy was probably perceived to be the personal 
Messiah, in whom the hope of Israel should be real- 
ized ; but oftener when the prophet thought of the 



134 Christian Facts and Forces. 

Servant of God he had before his spirit the vision of 
a collective humanity, the redeemed people of God, 
the true Israel ; and of this society and holy city of 
men he would say, " I have not labored in vain ; my 
right and my recompense is with my God." I want 
you in this connection to notice particularly this 
fundamental truth of the Old Testament prophecy 
that men together, in their collective capacity, as a 
society, or holy city, were looked upon as the elect 
Servant of God who should be glorified. You may 
sometimes have wondered why so little hope of per- 
sonal immortality pervades the Old Testament. It 
seems to gleam from a few passages ; but the thought 
of personal immortality in some other world was not 
the pervasive hope of the Old Testament. In those 
earlier Scriptures we read first the prophecy of the 
salvation of men as the people of God — the prophecy 
of social salvation, and social immortality. You 
may be surprised, if you have not thought of it, 
to see how the pages of prophecy grow bright with 
this Messianic promise of a redeemed Israel, of a 
coming humanity, which shall be the dwelling- 
place and temple of Jehovah. The individual man 
seems almost to be forgotten in the contemplation 
of the glory of Zion, the city of God. The indi- 
vidual man is to keep his name and have his per- 
petual blessing as he shares in the glory of the city 
of God, and its triumph becomes his. " Behold, the 
Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the earth. Say 
ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation 
Cometh; behold, his reward is with him, and his 
recompense before him. And they shall call them 
The holy people, The redeemed of the Lord; 



The Glorification of Life, 135 

and thou shait be called Sought out, A city not 
forsaken.'' 

Think, then, of the worth and greatness of a 
human life in that elect society and holy city which 
is the Servant of God. Think of what it would be, 
what power and worth, what hope, and strange, un- 
earthly glory, would descend upon us, and wrap us 
around, and comprehend us all as in something 
divine and holy, if a single city — if this city of our 
homes — should begin to realize this prophetic vision 
of the people and city of God. If the corporate 
consciousness of the city should become a judgment 
and recompense with God ; if the sense of God and 
His holy presence should envelop the whole city in 
its power, and reach every man in it, even as the 
morning light comes into every home; if the city 
should awake with God ; if, throughout the day, in 
the mind of the city, the thought of God should 
have its dwelling-place, and if in the government of 
the people the law of God should have its throne ; 
if some awe of the divine righteousness should per- 
vade the business of the city, and some deep sense 
of divine blessedness, like a fountain of life, should 
well up and abound in the happiness of the city, and 
some greatness of the divine purpose should enlarge 
all the work of the city, and make the least faithful- 
ness a service of God ; if some peace of the divine 
eternity should rest upon all life's changes in the 
city, and the hope of some divine event bend over 
every new-made grave, and the comfort of some 
divine omnipresence fill as with an all-pervasive love 
every licart in tlie city that had been left in loneli- 
ness of grief; — if, in one word, a whole city, should 



136 Christia7i Facts aiid Forces, 

become, what Isaiah beheld in the far future, a city 
of God, a Messianic city, the elect Servant of God, — 
think you that in that city " Sought out, A city not 
forsaken," any human life could seem to be a life for 
nought, and its labor in vain ? a worthless thing to 
be trodden under foot, or only a moment's flash of 
pleasure ? a life not to be prized and kept as a sacred, 
immortal trust? Would not every least life in a 
city of God, full of the consciousness of God, become 
a life of moral worth, a birth into an immortal con- 
sciousness, a part in some universal good, a fellow- 
ship with something celestial, an anticipation and 
a share in some eternal triumph and joy of life? 
Yet this — nothing less than this — was the revelation 
of human life as redeemed and glorified, in the 
inspiration and power of which prophets of old went 
before kings with the word of Jehovah, and proclaimed 
to the people the law of the Lord, who should redeem 
Israel. 

Time passed ; the vision of the prophet faded ; the 
city of the scribes and Pharisees, and the Roman 
soldiers in the courts of the Temple, was no city 
of God. It had come to this, that even the chief 
priests in the city of David could answer, " We have 
no king but Caesar." The history of the holy people 
seemed to be ending in this lamentation ; " I have 
labored in vain ; I have spent my strength in vain." 
But in the midst of the city I see one who is saying, 
" I and the Father are one " — " And he that sent me 
is with me " — " I seek not mine own will, but the 
will of the Father which hath sent me " — " The 
Father knoweth me and I know the Father," I 
see One walking in a strange glory of divinity 



The Glorification of Life. 137 

among men, wrapt in an unearthly consciousness 
of God, standing in the midst of the rulers and 
speaking in the Temple as though the Infinite and 
Holy God from beyond the stars were present filling 
his woes against men's cruel falsehoods with an 
eternal significance, and sounding, also, from the 
heavens of His love, in that voice of the Son of God, 
His eternal word of forgiveness and of promise. I 
see One whom the people in their sins cannot under- 
stand, whom the powers of this world hate with a 
deadly hatred, whom a little company of timid fol- 
lowers look upon with a dazed and confused expect- 
ancy —Himself serene as a star of heaven, and his 
face luminous with a divine consciousness — all his 
judgment and his work with God — I see Him led 
from Pilate's seat bearing a cross, crucified between 
two thieves, and in the last moment of man's cruel 
mockery, and death's relentless grasp, saying still 
" My God," and, " Father, into thy hands I commend 
my spirit." I see One risen from the dead, appear- 
ing in the garden, still human, yet looking beyond 
Mary's eager adoration to the glory which he had 
with the Father into which he shall ascend ; I see 
One who was crucified and buried, who appears in 
the midst of the disciples, bearing only the marks 
of his sufferings, and coming in the peace of eternity 
to the friends among whom he had suffered ; I see One 
who came from God, and who had kept his divine 
Sonship unbroken through a life of temptation and 
in dcatli, who had known God and was known 
of God, and whom no man had understood or can 
yet understand, because no man has so lived with 
God and God in him, I behold Him — his sullbrings 



138 Christian Facts and Forces. 

over and the days of his humihation ended — bidding 
farewell to this little world upon which he had mani- 
fested the glory of the Highest, and from this earth, 
which seems to us so separate and so distant from 
all celestial realms, stepping into the unseen and the 
heavenly from that mountain-top as though it were 
but a moment's distance between the two, ascending 
into the glory which he had with God from the be- 
ginning even while the disciples stood gazing up into 
heaven ! And from the eternal Presence, into which 
the Lord has vanished, comes to all the generations 
his word of power, ^^ Lo, I am with you alway, even 
unto the end of the world.'' 

Is the city of God a prophet's vision, the far vision 
still of the disciple who saw it descending from God, 
having the glory of God? But the realization of 
God upon this earth in the person of Jesus Christ is 
no future vision, and no vain dream. Christ was 
here upon this little earth in the presence and the 
power of God. It remains a most significant and 
indisputable fact of our human history that the God- 
man was here, that his life from beginning to end 
was one continuous and realized presence of God on 
earth. When I may deny the sun in the sky, I may 
deny that there has shone upon humanity a spirit 
all luminous with God. I do not believe it simply 
because disciples of old saw it, and were made new 
men by it, and bare witness of it ; I believe it 
because the light of it is still in our skies. I be- 
lieve it because I see it shining still in a world's 
thought, life-giving in our human experience, and 
bringing to us in our darkness and our selfishness a 
light, and love, and glory, in which our hearts may 



The Glorification of Life, 139 

become all aglow with such sense of God, and 
thought of heaven, as men without Christ never had, 
or can have ; I see it, Christ's own light of God, fall- 
ing upon the characters of men and women, and 
transfiguring them with a heavenly charity, and 
still the evidence of it lies over the whole Christian 
world, as the evidence of the sun lies upon the ripen- 
ing fields. I believe that, "There was the true 
light, even the light which lighteth every man, 
coming into the world." 

In what has just been said is contained the answer 
to that question of real life which often presses upon 
our spirits : How can I rise above this daily insig- 
nificance of my life ? How can common life among 
common things become glorious in my eyes ? We 
may begin in Isaiah's way. We may seek to dignify 
life by making it God's service. We may labor and 
pray to make our city, by all good deeds, and prac- 
tical philanthropy, a city Sought out, and a city not 
forsaken. Every moral act is contact of the human 
will with God's pure will. Every good deed is a 
point of connection between a human life and the 
Eternal righteousness. Every time a man does the 
true, right, generous thing, he proclaims himself 
thereby to be more than a soulless body upon a God- 
less earth. Everything good and beautiful is of the 
celestial order, and bears witness to it ; everything 
wrong and impure is of this earth earthy. The liv- 
ing God is present in conscience, and every sin is a 
fearful thing. Let tlio presence of God bo felt in a 
city, and whitlicr could its sin flee from that pres- 
ence? Let the sins of a city come out from tlioir 
darkness and corruption and be judged before the 



140 Christian Facts and Forces, 

brightness of Jehovah's presence. Those frauds and 
deceits; those false promises and bitter words; all 
that uncharitableness and hatefulness ; that slander 
and lie; that overreaching and contempt of the 
rights of a man; that conscienceless competition; 
that fraudulent custom of the trade; that shiftless 
piece of work ; that wretched selfishness in the home ; 
that neglect of common humanity ; that petty pride, 
and most worthless self-sufficiency ; — let them come 
forth, and all those dark deeds, those cruel passions 
of men, and shameful betrayals, and wrongs of women 
and of children, — let them come forth from the 
hiding places of the city, from the stores and the 
homes, yes and from the secret thoughts of our 
hearts, — let them come forth for judgment before the 
living God, whose holiness is as a consuming fire. 
They shall be brought to nought by the manifesta- 
tion of his coming. We cannot escape from his 
presence. He is in the heavens, and on the earth, in 
the city, and in the conscience and the soul of every 
man. Our life is bound up with God's, and our 
right and our work is with God. 

Thus, I would say, we may rightly begin the en- 
nobling and glorifying of life in Israel's way of real- 
izing Jehovah's presence. And we need a revival of 
the righteousness of God, a revival of the Hebrew 
conscience, throughout this land. But we may go 
also beyond Isaiah, and find God very present to us 
through Christ. After he had so personally and so 
fully realized God's presence and love on earth, 
Christ promised to send the Holy Ghost. And now 
in all the Christian life and thought of our world the 
Holy Spirit is working. Think the most Christian 



The Glorification of Life. 141 

thought you can ; cherish the most Christian feeling 
to which your heart can expand ; go, do the most 
Christian thing you can conceive, and you will be 
nearest God, you will have most of God, your work 
will be with God. You will be in Christ's name the 
Servant with God ; and in that service of thought or 
conduct you will know God, and be known of God. 
For the manifestation of the Lord's presence is all 
about us, to be found and known in everything 
Christian. In discipleship of the Son of God there 
opens for us the Holy Presence of God. Think of 
that wonderful prayer of Christ for all who should 
believe on his name : — " And the glory which thou 
has given me I have given unto them ; that they 
may be one, even as we are one ; I in them, and 
thou in me, that they may be perfected into one.'* 
He dwelt in the glory of God. Into that glory he 
would take our lives. Of that glory which he had 
with the Father he would have our lives receive. 

Would that we knew more of this. Would that 
we had about us and in us more of this divine 
glorification of human life. For it is something for 
here and now, for to-day and to-morrow, and every 
hour, — this diviner consciousness and joy of a soul. 
There have been times when even though we have 
made little profession of religion, or pretense of spir- 
ituality, we have had something of tliis diviner con- 
sciousness of life. What was that grand sense of 
danger braved and duty done, but a leaping up of 
the spirit within us into the strength of the Eternal 
God? What was that strange peace and comfort, in 
that extreme hour of sorrow, but the descent upon 
us of diviner mercy than we knew ? What is con- 



142 Christian Fads and Forces. 



science but God's own voice ? What is love but a 
ray of God's blessedness ? "What is true thought but 
the image of God reflecting the mind of its Maker ? 
What is honest doubt but the spirit which is in man 
seeking for the divine Spirit in the universe without ? 
We want more real religion, more sense of God 
around our little life. There is a sovereign, holy, 
and loving Presence all around us. As this earth lies 
ensphered in the all-encompassing sky, so, could we 
but see it, each human soul has its being, and lies 
embosomed in God and his eternal love. And this 
age has its work too wdth God. If* from all these 
years of questioning and of thought one conviction 
has come to me stronger than another, and disclosed 
its power — a deeper depth beneath all doubt — it is the 
conviction that there is a God present upon this earth 
near to every one of us. There is a divine current 
flowing straight on through all the world-ages, a 
divine power still moving through our times. It 
is flowing through the world's thought and life — its 
purest and deepest thought and life. It is flowing 
beneath all churches, lifting them up to nobler 
things, and bearing all on to some larger service and 
happier Catholicity. Let us throw ourselves unre- 
servedly into the full current and power of God's 
love. Let us have hearts to feel his presence. Let 
us have willing minds to perceive the movings of 
his Spirit. Let us have loving thoughts to follow 
the outgoings of God's grace among men. Let us not 
wish to hold ourselves aloof from God. Let us give 
up everything that would keep us apart from this 
diviner sense and fellowship of life. Let us leave our 
work with God, and dwell in the hope of the glory of 



The Glorification of Life. 143 

God. And when the light fails, and faith grows 
dim, and we know nothing but our littleness, our 
loneliness, and our mortality, then let us trust 
with a simple and a perfect trust the Son of God who 
in our humanity, and for us, knew the Father, and 
was known of God. 



XII. 

A EEAL SENSE OF SIK— A LENTEN SERMON. 

"^nts t^t Sim mih xinto "i^im, jifKi\nx, I i^t sinmts a^atot Jtabm, 
nnts in Iftj fiigljt: I am no mort toortftj to U tKlltij I62 ^fi^-" — Luke 

XV. 21. 

The observance of a season of fasting and prayer 
before the return of the day of the resurrection, was a 
custom which grew spontaneously out of the Chris- 
tian consciousness of the primitive Church ; and by 
one of those conserving providences which treasure up 
in Christian history what is good for man, it happens 
that this ancient testimony of the early Church to the 
sufferings and death of its Lord has survived centu- 
ries of change, and still has sufficient power to cause 
a social hush throughout the Christian world. In our 
liberty of conscience the martyrs and saints of the first 
Christian centuries still rule us from their graves. But 
in the passion and temptation of our world Christians 
cannot afford to wear any formal habit, or to cling 
to anything fictitious in religious experience. Life 
is bringing everything religious to the test of 
reality. Our spiritual experiences must be honest, 
or they cannot claim to be religious. No second- 
hand religion will answer the uses of our times. 
Genuineness is the first necessity of the living 
Church. Men are not to be guided through the 
straits of to-day by echoes of the voices of yesterday. 
Christians must still speak what they have seen and 
144 



A Real Sense of Sin, 145 

do know, if they are to have apostolic success in 
casting out the sins of men. Religious genuineness 
is particularly desirable in all penitential expressions. 
An unreal and imitated sense of sin enervates char- 
acter. A fictitious, theological sense of sin, rather than 
a vital, moral conviction of it, has produced no little 
unconscious Jesuitism in Protestant communions. 
Genuine penitence, on the contrary, is the soil from 
which all virtue may spring. 

I wish, accordingly, to improve this first Sunday 
in Lent by leaving in the thoughts of all of you, if 
possible, this question : — What morally real thing 
for us corresponds to the once familiar phrase, a 
conviction of sin ? 

I think we are exposed to the temptation of re- 
ligious fictitiousness in our use of penitential lan- 
guage. We are liable to use forms of abject confession 
from habit, or from a sense of duty, when there may 
be little truth corresponding to such expressions in 
our sense of life and happiness. For fear lest some 
constituent element of religious experience common 
to our fathers may be fading out from our piety, we 
seek to reproduce tones and colors of experience 
which do not altogether harmonize with the type and 
habit of religious devotion most commonly produced 
by the Holy Spirit in our churches. Occasionally 
individuals among us may with inward sincerity 
restore forms of spiritual experience which were 
familiar under other conditions of religious thought 
and life; l)ut sucli persons seem now to be tlio ex- 
cerptions ratlior tlian tlie rule. I noticed, for example, 
in reading the other evening, some })hrases in which 

Oliver Cromwell in his letters describes his sense of 

10 



146 Christian Facts and Forces. 

personal unworthiness, and his dwelling in Meshec, 
as well as the allusion which he made to the experi- 
ence of vanity and the carnal mind, through which 
his young daughter was being led in the mercy of 
God, and the account also of the searchings of con- 
science, and the weeping even of the leaders of the 
Parliamentary Army in preparation for their decision 
to fight in their second civil war. Those expressions 
of Oliver Cromwell and his soldiers have in them a 
nerve and vigor which indicate their moral genuine- 
ness ; but if this morning I should read a collection 
of similar phrases from the passages of religious 
biography, I doubt if they would seem altogether 
natural and real even to many truly humble and 
devout persons in a modern congregation. At least 
we should have to interpret them by other feelings 
and experiences to fill them with present moral 
meanings. 

Now there are two ways in which we may look at 
this obvious state of things. We may say, men 
ought to have such convictions of sin, such sense of 
the utter wretchedness of man, as once characterized 
profound religious experience; and, therefore, we 
will continue using the forms of that experience, and 
preaching the doctrines under which that experience 
grew ; and we will resist as a defection from the faith 
once delivered to the saints of the middle ages any, 
even the slightest, deviation from those doctrines, or 
from that type of religious experience. The chief 
difficulty with this method of dealing with the fact 
is that it attempts the impossible. For we are all of 
us in these matters under a higher Power, and Provi- 
dence creates for us the spiritual conditions of our 



A Real Sense of Sin. 147 

times. We may think that the general religious 
temper of some former age was better than ours ; 
but we have to breathe the religious atmosphere 
which the Spirit, that bloweth where it listeth, pro- 
vides in our times, and Christian wisdom consists 
always in making the best of present providential 
conditions. The atmosphere of the carboniferous 
age w^as doubtless more favorable than that of the 
present day for the formation of the vegetable 
growths which have been left for our use in the great 
coal beds ; but our present atmosphere is the air pro- 
vided for our life, — and, indeed, there are more sing- 
ing birds in it. We should gain nothing by bringing 
back, if we could, the carboniferous age of theology 
— ^the age of the dcDOsit of the great confessions ; — 
our duty is to make the most profitable use of these 
results of the past life of the Church, and let Chris- 
tion faith grow now, as best it may, according to its 
present spiritual environment. 

The other, and better way, therefore, of regarding 
this matter, is to accept thankfully and hopefully our 
present religious conditions, and then to watch and 
to pray, that we may conform our inward experiences 
to the best and the truest wliich is now in the provi- 
dence of God actually possible to us. 

The question with which we started reduces itself, 
accordingly, to this : Without attempting to repro- 
duce exactly former religious experiences, what real 
sense of sin should I gain under the circumstances 
of my own life? In this effort to find further and 
heli)ful answer to this question, I would ask altoiilion 
to the following considerations: — 

First, Our conviction of sin will correspond to our 



148 Christian Facts and Forces, 

idea of God. In other words what we may think of 
ourselves, and of our sinfulness, will run parallel 
with our thought of God and his relation to us. If 
a man, for example, habitually thinks of his God as 
only an impassive nature, or thoughtless Power, who 
cares for none of these things, his corresponding 
sense of human sinfulness will not rise above a con- 
viction of human failure and misfortune. This 
proposition that our sense of sin and our idea of God 
go together, is so plain, that, without arguing it, I 
pass to the next statement necessary to clear up this 
subject. 

Secondly, We cannot hold one conception of God, 
and attach to it a conviction of sin which belongs to 
another conception of God. AYe cannot retain a 
religious feeling or experience which is the reflex of 
one predominant conception of God, if we have 
habitually in our mind a different thought of God. 
For example, when St. Augustine ceased to think of 
this world as under the dominion of two powers of 
good and evil, and believed in one true God, he saw 
the sins of his youth in altogether a new light. So as 
we change, or clarify, or Christianize, our thought of 
God, our religious feelings will naturally follow that 
change, and our sense of sin, if it be genuine, will 
correspond to our thought of what God is, and of 
what we are towards God. Yet just at this point we 
are apt to fall into religious fictitiousness. We may 
not discern how great has been the change which has 
come over men's thoughts concerning God, and so 
vainly strive to force ourselves into emotions and con- 
victions which were true to former ideas of God, but 
which are not true to our prevalent thought of God. 



A Real Sense of Sin, 149 

This brings me to a third statement which I will 
take just time enough to render intelligible, viz.: 
there was once a prevalent thought of God, which 
may broadly be defined as the Latin theology, and 
corresponding to that theology there was cultivated 
a peculiar conviction of sin. After the Gospel had 
become domesticated upon this earth, and the apos- 
tles had left the new heavenly faith to become 
naturalized in the thoughts and customs of the 
world, the Greek mind took Christianity to itself. 
And the Greek mind seized strongly upon the truth 
of the divine naturalness of Christ, of the fitness of 
the Gospel to human nature, of the oneness of God 
and man in the incarnation. The Nicene Creed 
m.arks that faith of the ancient church. Then the 
Roman mind appropriated Christianity. And Chris- 
tian Rome was nothing, if not imperial. Rome made 
of the Gospel a new law for the nations. Hence 
Latin theology was moulded in the idea of God's 
sovereignty. Augustine's theology had in it perma- 
nent truths, which profound religious experience will 
still recognize ; but it was formed and fashioned as 
a theology for a church which was commissioned to 
rule men. Bring the theology of Roman scholas- 
ticism into comparison with the parable of the prodi- 
gal son, and its distinctive character becomes evident 
at a glance. The Father becomes an Emperor; and 
he is not present every day in tlie common life of 
the household, personally managing its affairs, but 
he dwells withdrawn in august state upon his 
throne, and the Churcli as cliief servant becomes (lie 
lord of the house. Tlie ])r()(ligal must return to the 
chief servant, and receive indulgence through him. 



150 Christian Facts and Forces. 

Calvinism revolted from this subjection to the church 
and its hierarchy, and brought every individual 
soul face to face with God. But Calvinism retained 
the Latin idea of Christianity as a divine statecraft. 
Calvin's idea of God shows still the lines of Augus- 
tine's Latin mould in which it was cast. To God the 
Sovereign Ruler, whose law had been broken, comes 
man the sinner, to be elected, or to be reprobated, 
according to God's good pleasure. The Calvinistic 
idea of God exalted His wisdom and His holiness ; 
but the Calvinistic theology was nothing, if not 
imperial. "We should acknowledge that there was a 
providence in this subjection of the modern nations 
at their birth to an imperial theology. Man needs to 
be mastered by the sovereignty of God before he 
is ready for deeper and kindlier revelations of the 
Spirit. 

Such then, broadly speaking, was the Latin thought 
of God. And my present point is, that this thought 
was accompanied by its corresponding sense of sin 
in the minds of the men who held it. They looked 
up into the heavens, and saw, holding the stars in 
his hand, an All- wise and Omnipotent Ruler, whose 
law man had broken, and under whose condemna- 
tion the whole guilty world was lying in its sin. They 
believed that all souls had had their day of probation 
in Adam, and all generations were bound together in 
one common disobedience and original sin, and are 
justly exposed to the wrath of God. They read the 
Gospels under that conception of God's sovereign 
holiness, and they dared trust Christ enough to be- 
lieve that in the secret and gracious counsels of God 
his sufferings would be sufficient atonement for the 



A Real Sense of Sin. 1 5 1 

elect. No wonder that under such conceptions of 
God's supreme Will, and the awful majesty of the 
divine law, the hearts of men smote within them, 
that even young children, on their way to the Cross 
of him who once took infants from their mothers' 
arms and blessed them, must be made to pass through 
horrors of contrition like the torments of the damned ; 
and that poor Cowper " from a maniac's tongue " 
sent up the cry, " Forsaken ! " And when God's love 
prevailed, as it often did in men's thought of their 
redemption, still their experience of grace was 
darkened by a deep sense of the broken law and the 
utter depravity of man's nature. 

Now if we would reproduce in our churches ex- 
actly that religious experience, and particularly its 
conviction of sin, we must reproduce the conditions 
of thought and life in the world under which that 
experience was once genuine and true. But we can- 
not do that, for, fourthly, during the past hundred 
years, throughout the Christian world, a change has 
been coming over men's thought of God. 

What has happened is this : the sun has been 
rising, and the shadow of Rome has been shortening 
over the modern Christian world. And particularly, 
— to keep close to my present subject, — the world's 
thought of its God has been growing more Christ- 
like. We have not been losing utterly the truth that 
there is a divine law in the universe. Indeed physi- 
cal science, with its exaltation of law, and its stern 
creed of heredity, has been helping us keep in mind 
what was true in the Calvinistic conception of tlio 
infrustrable divine decrees. There is a will of (^lod 
to be done in all the processes of life, and there is a 



152 Christian Facts and Forces, 

sovereign order of the Creator in the heavens. But 
gradually, and almost without observation, our con- 
ception of God's nature and His sovereignty has been 
gaining a more Christian tone and color. A purer 
and warmer light glows through our thought of God. 
What Christ was seen by the disciples to be, that we 
dare believe God is essentially and eternally. Any- 
thing Christlike is absolutely to be trusted. The 
Word was made flesh. Christ is the revelation of 
God. All our thoughts of God are to be formed and 
fashioned, not in the type of natural law, nor in the 
mould of any human government, nor in the image 
of Csesar, but after the likeness of Christ, who is the 
express image of the Father's person. Our God is 
exalted in the heavens, the Lord of hosts ; yet He is 
a sovereign, holy, and loving presence in this world, 
and there are not two kingdoms, one of nature and 
the other of grace, but there is one Divine revelation 
through all ; — God is in nature, and nature is God's, 
and divine things are also most natural, and most 
human, for Creator and creation are one in Christ, 
the incarnate Word. 

We now draw near the answer for which these 
remarks have been preparatory. Corresponding to 
this increasing Christian sense of God there is a con- 
viction of sin which we may realize. We are to gain 
it simply by coming into the Light of Christ's char- 
acter in its adorable revelation of God, and seeing 
ourselves in that Light. God is all around us, a 
holy, sovereign, loving Presence; we have in all 
things to do with that One omnipresent. Christlike 
Character. Everything sinful, the least wrong, 
touches and jars against the pure divinity around 



A Real Sense of Sin. 153 

us ; it is contrary to God in Christ, contrary to the 
infinite Christlikeness of God. There is, indeed, 
a divine order of the world, a law of righteous- 
ness in nature, and in the life of man. And the 
prodigal's sin was against heaven ; — sin is against 
the whole celestial order of being. But this is not 
all. We do not reach the truest and most convincing 
experience of sin until we have said, ^^ Father, I have 
sinned against thee !'' It is not simply, when we sin, 
that we are breaking a law, and exposing ourselves 
to punishment ; it is more like breaking the trust 
of a friend. We are in the pure and friendly 
presence of the living God. Sin wounds that. Sin 
is the prodigal's wrong against the Father. Feel 
that divine fatherhood, feel that all-encompassing 
divine friendship, and in its presence you would 
not think again that anxious, loveless, jealous 
thought. We would not speak that uncharitable 
word in the hearing of such a God as Christ reveals. 
You cannot consent to that untruth ; you cannot re- 
fuse that duty ; you must not yield to that tempta- 
tion, if you realize the presence of the Spirit of 
Christ round about you; — the disciples fell upon 
their faces and worshipped, when the transfiguring 
light of God's presence shone from the face, and the 
very raiment of Christ upon that holy mount. 

Corresponding also to this increasing sense of God 
in his Christlike presence around our thoughts and 
ways, tliore will si)ring up within us a growing sense 
of the moral liatefulncss of particular sins. There 
is a Christlikc scorn to be cherislied for things con- 
temptible. To the cowardly scribes and Phariseos, 
hypocrites, in our own thoughts we must learn to say, 



154 Christian Facts and Forces, 

and mean it, — Woe be unto you ! We have a per- 
sonal example of God's rectitude by which to measure 
our conduct. Take the Sermon on the Mount in 
your heart down the street with you, and let it reveal 
to you what the sin of the world is. Or come, take 
the cup of the communion of Christ, and at the 
Lord's table, while we receive the forgiveness of sin, 
let us understand what thoughts of our hearts have 
been with the multitude who cried, " Crucify him." 
How should I remember that denial of duty ? how 
think of that sin ? How did Peter feel when sud- 
denly, while he was cowering in that angry crowd, 
he saw Jesus' eye quietly resting upon him ? " And 
the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. . . . And 
Peter remembered. . . . And he went out and wept 
bitterly." 

Again, in consonance with this increasing sense 
of God's adorable Christlikeness there springs up a 
strong sense of the worth of character. We want 
character more than anything else. We want not 
this or that virtue merely, but character equal to all 
duty and trial; we want character worthy of all 
admiration ; we want character which can never be 
put to shame; we want character so strong, clear, 
and pure, that God himself can look upon it and be 
pleased. We look at Jesus Christ, and if we once 
see him as he is, we must pray ever afterwards for 
character — more character and nobler than we have 
ever attained in our broken lives. We can never be 
satisfied without Christlike character. Moreover, 
this perception of perfect character and our admira- 
tion of it in Christ, discloses to us our deepest need 
of reconciliation. At the bottom of our hearts, at the 



A Real Sense of Sin, 155 

spring of our wills, we need to become at one with 
such a God. Our God as revealed in Christ is too 
noble, too righteous, too just, too attractive and 
adorable, for us not to wish to be at one in our 
inmost being with such infinite Christlikeness. And 
we see and feel how our lives do not yet fit into that 
divine element of our being. Our characters, all 
around their edges, are ragged, and broken, and at 
heart they do not rest quietly in God. They must 
be poised and centered upon that pure will of God, 
and be rounded and fitted to that perfection. There 
can be no real peace for us, until our souls become 
fitted to the divine element in which they were made 
to have their being. There is no true, lasting recon- 
ciliation with life possible for us, except through 
reconciliation with God. 

Once having seen and felt this divine Christlike- 
ness to which human hearts are made to correspond, 
we shall know what alienation from God our siri is, 
and we shall turn with a strong repentance from all 
our littleness, selfishness, and un worthiness. " Ye 
therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is 
perfect.'' That convinces us of sin. The spell of 
an infinite attraction has been laid upon us. Con- 
science within us has seen that gracious possibility 
of character, and leaped for joy. Desert it, choose 
lower good, be content with a fragmentary virtue, 
and conscience would become an avenging torment. 
Follow it, and conscience by its very rebukes be- 
comes a herald of happiness. For "every man that 
hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he 
is pure." 



156 Christian Facts and Forces, 

Along lines of experience like these we may gain 
for ourselves, and in accordance with our present 
spiritual conditions of life, genuine and profitable 
conviction of sin. And to such penitence the word 
of forgiveness is ever spoken, and from it ascends 
the acceptable prayer of the new life. 



XIII. 
PERSONAL POWER. 

i\tvitt into IJt tounlrs ix-ear to i\t kiiltemss, into a titj ^alUlJ JBpfetaim ; 
anlJ i\^txt %t iznizii ixiiti tSt bis^ipUs." — John xi. 54. 

During the latter part of February, or early in March, 
Jesus withdrew from Jerusalem, and retired with his 
disciples to a solitary place in the wild, hill-country to 
the North East of Jerusalem. A few days before the 
seventh of April — the day upon which that year the 
feast of the passover fell, — Jesus left Ephraim, and 
to the amazement and fear of his disciples went be- 
fore them in the way which led up to Jerusalem. 
Thus for several weeks, and at this time of the year, 
Jesus, as John tells us, tarried with the disciples at 
Ephraim. His enemies did not know where he was ; 
he did not appear in the midst of the multitude in 
the temple ; for a few quiet weeks he was doing per- 
sonal work with his disciples. 

It is helpful to us, whenever the Gospel narratives 
permit it, to associate Jesus' words and deeds with 
particular days or seasons of the j^ear. It serves to 
make Jesus' wonderful life more real and present to 
us to think. What was the Lord doing this very day? 
What words did he speak at this time? During 
tins season of our year, at this time which the Chris- 
tian world is consecrating more and more generally 
to religious thought and works of n^pentanco, Jesus 

157 



158 Christian Facts and Fo7^ces, 

had withdrawn from the crowds of the great cities, 
and was tarrying with his disciples at Ephraim. 

Yet never since Jesus began to go about doing 
good, had there been more need of his works of 
mercy. There were many lepers besides those 
wandering, God-forsaken, upon the borders of Sa- 
maria. There were still sick folk enough to be 
healed in Capernaum. There were devils to be cast 
out from degraded souls in the towns and cities of 
Judea. The common people were suffering under 
burdens too heavy to be borne, which the ruling 
classes had bound upon them. It was not because 
the world was not waiting for Jesus' presence in it 
that he tarried some five weeks with his disciples at 
Ephraim. There w^as a will of God for Jesus, and 
a work also for his disciples, to be done in those 
quiet days at Ephraim. Doubtless that season was 
for Jesus himself a preparation for his hour. But 
Jesus did not depart to Ephraim for himself alone ; 
he tarried there with his disciples. Those disciples 
were strong, eager men, who felt keenly the evils of 
their times ; they were men of the people who knew 
how much wrong there was in the towns of Judea, 
and how the populace throughout Galilee needed a 
Messiah ; — impetuous men like Peter, quick to draw 
the sword ; sons of thunder, like James and John ; 
and also that cold, calculating soul called Judas, who 
was "on the make'' even in the Lord's company, 
and who was impatient to make more from the 
revolution which he thought was coming. These 
twelve disciples Jesus took with him, and kept 
quietly with him, while he tarried in Ephraim. 
Judas must have found it a dull town ; and, often 



Personal Power, 159 

the boisterous waves of Galilee may have leaped up 
in Peter's memory, and he would think of the crowds 
waiting for his Master on the shore; but Jesus 
tarried with the disciples at Ephraim. 

That time was for them an opportunity of per- 
sonal concentration. It was a preparation for their 
future apostleship. They might gain personal 
power in those weeks. The Lord was with them to 
teach them his truth. His example laid its spell 
upon their spirits. His light was shining into their 
inmost souls, and revealing them to themselves. 
His peace kept them in its perfect patience. This, 
accordingly, is the lesson of our text for us at this 
time. In the Christian life, and for it, there is to be 
a preparation of personal power. We need to gather 
personal force for life. In order that the Christian 
disciple may become a Christian apostle he is to gain 
through companionship with Christ personal con- 
centration and power. 

In speaking further of this personal preparation 
and power for our lives, let me remind you of the 
danger of our becoming distracted, and almost losing 
our souls, among the many things which we want to 
do, or which we think ought to be done. I do not 
refer merely to the innumerable little things among 
which our lives may seem to run out into nothing- 
ness, as some rivers are lost in the sands ; nor do I 
have in mind chiefly that absorbing necessity of 
business in which the heart of a man's life may be 
in danger of becoming sucked dry. I am si)eakinii: 
more especially of the services wliich Christians ari^ 
called upon to render, the kindly, heli)ful tilings 
which some one must be always doing, if people are 



i6o Christian Facts and Forces. 

to be held up, and society is not to slip backwards. 
The demands upon the benevolence, and the helpful 
powers, of the Church have been steadily increasing 
for a hundred years. When were there ever more 
useful things needing to be done right off than there 
are to-day? When did liberal and large-minded 
Christian men and women ever have so many 
opportunities to do good, and to do a great deal of 
good, as the providences of God are now affording ? 
Literally the field now is the world. Our Christianity 
in sober truth has the opportunity now to overcome 
evil with good throughout the whole world: The 
twelve of old began to bear witness to their Lord 
at Jerusalem ; and then providence led the way to 
Antioch, and opened Asia Minor, and Macedonia, 
and continued enlarging the scope of their possible 
service, until we find Peter writing to the Dispersion 
in several countries, and one brave Apostle had 
made the discovery that the Gospel was for all the 
Gentiles. That providence which enlarged the 
horizon of the Apostles, has continued expanding the 
task of Christianity, and by calls for men, and drafts 
upon our property, from all quarters, in the name of 
the Lord, we are taught that God loves the world, 
and our Christ is for all men. Or consider the task 
laid upon our Christianity within the limits of a 
single city. We may not always realize it, but it is 
a work set by the providence of God before the doors 
of every church, and a good waiting to be done 
around all Christian homes. The work of making 
a single city righteous, pure, happy, like the city of 
God, might task the resources of angels. Yet that 
city, and nothing less than that city of God, is the 



Personal Power, i6i 

ideal of the true Church of Christ. In order to the 
next possible approximation towards that Christian 
ideal how many helpful things, and true things, and 
strong things, need to be done, and as soon as possi- 
ble ! Still coiled beneath our civilization is the ser- 
pent whose head must be bruised by the heel of our 
Christianity. We all know, or may know, men and 
women, boys and girls, who need daily to be helped 
to good, useful, and honorable lives. And confronting 
the Church all the while is the popular atheism — 
the dull, despairing, sometimes revengeful feeling 
that the Christian's God has gone on a far journey, 
and does not care for poor needlewomen, or mind 
day-laborers. There is, also, that other atheism in 
our hearts, which leaves us imagining that it is 
practically impossible for our Christ to do as much 
for many other people, or for nobody's children, as he 
has done for us and our children. And here, in the 
very heart of a city, upon whose streets during a 
single year representatives of eighteen or twenty 
different nationalities have been met, stands a house 
of God, a Puritan meeting-house, whose foundations 
were laid by men who believed with all their might 
in the city of God, and who crossed the seas in search 
of it; and all this fixed capital of religion is held by 
Christians as a sacred trust in the name of the Lord, 
every pew and pew door of it; and as faithful 
stewards we would not deny our obligation to put 
this fixed capital of religion, this wliole religious 
'plani^ to tlic largest profits, and to use it not for our 
own edification merely, and our children's, but for 
the good of the whole community, and witli sc^ne 
wise prevision of the kind of society, law-abiding 

11 



1 62 Christian Facts and Forces. 

and free, or Godless and forsaken, in which we would 
have our children and children's children receive 
hereafter their inheritance from us. Such is the 
briefest outline or suggestion of the good works to 
which our Christian faith is pledged. 

Yet notwithstanding all the work needing to be 
done, Jesus departed with his disciples to Ephraim. 
In those hours when the disciples tarried with Jesus 
in some place near the wilderness, a deep personal 
work was going on. Their lives during those quiet, 
intense days, instead of expanding outwardly, were 
folded in ujDon themselves. It was a season for 
them of self-concentration in the presence of their 
Lord. While the world was perishing in its sins, 
Jesus took time to deepen and to intensify the per- 
sonal life of his disciples before he sent them forth 
finally into the world as his apostles. Renewed and 
inspired personalities were to be the Lord's means of 
grace to the world. The method of Christianity is 
personal influence. The world is not to be saved by 
institutionalism. Human society is to be redeemed 
and glorified by the personal lives, full of light and 
warmth, which shall strike through and illumine it. 
Divine grace is not an impersonal property — ^a 
sacramental magic, or a governmental provision — an 
intermediate something between the soul of man and 
the Spirit of God ; it is the love of God concentrated 
and incarnate in the Person of Jesus Christ, and from 
him working through his disciples as the living and 
personal power of the new life of redemption. More 
than anything else, essentially and vitally, Chris- 
tianity is the personal influence of Jesus — his con- 
tinual personal influence, always coming into human 



Personal Power. 163 

life — the Light of the world caught and reflected by 
each succeeding generation, glowing through thous- 
ands of lives that kindle in its beams, and becoming, 
through the multitude of these, the diffused radiance 
of a world's civilization. If we imagine that we can 
substitute anything else for this personal influence 
of Jesus we shall fail. Unless we can have among 
us men who have tarried with the Lord at Ephraim 
long enough to become personal centers and forces 
of righteousness and truth, we shall make only a 
formal and fruitless thing of all our charities and all 
our churches. Yet just this truth that the power of 
the Gospel lies in the personalities which it seizes 
upon, and inspires, we are in danger of losing sight 
of in the multiplicity of our agencies for doing good 
in the world. Jesus Christ made men before he 
made the church. Jesus created and concentrated 
strong, personal forces among his personal followers, 
before he gave to the disciples the cup of communion, 
and ordained them as his apostles to gather congre- 
gations of believers in his name. In Christ's work 
the inspired personality came first, and afterwards 
the New Testament and the Church. A true com- 
munion, or saved society of men and women, was the 
end sought from the beginning by Him who came 
preaching the Gospel of the kingdom; but the 
method of Jesus was personal influence, and the 
inspiration of chosen personalities by his Spirit, i 
The power of the Church consists in its fullness of , 
p(^r8onal forces. Your personal power for good may 
be multiplied many fold in the organized life of tlio 
Church ; but personal powers are the vital units 



164 Christian Facts and Forces, 

which, multiplied together, constitute that organic 
whole which is the living body of Christ. 

The same remark applies as pertinently to all 
charitable work. Benevolence of late has been com- 
pelled to organize in the face of modern wants. 
Village methods do not answer city needs. Associa- 
tion is becoming in all large towns the approved 
method of charity. "We form societies for almost 
every good work. The economic helpfulness of love 
in modern society lies largely in its organization ; 
and its weakness also is there. Its power for good is 
increased by combination of the many in one work- 
ing force ; but its danger lies in the ease with which 
we suffer the organization to take the place of the 
personal influence in our good works. j\Iany of you, 
very many of you, are connected with one or with 
several of the philanthropic and Christian societies 
of this city. In those organizations your personal 
influence may be taken up, and increased, as an in- 
teger in a multiplication table. You can do more 
through those societies than you could apart from 
them. Yes, if you are doing what you may through 
the organization, and not trusting the organization 
to do it for you. If we make charitable proxies of 
these societies, we may indeed help other persons to 
do more ; but we cannot accomplish what we might, 
if instead of making charitable proxies of them we 
regard them as points of application for personal 
influence. If your object is to keep your benevolent 
society alive, you may indeed help others find oppor- 
tunity of doing good through it ; but if you would 
take that philanthropic society to which you belong 



Personal Power. 165 

and make it a means of your personal service, a 
point of application of your personal force to some 
want or sin of the city, for all the people of which 
Christ tasted death, then some of the greater works 
of faith might become possible here. But if we idly 
subordinate the personal to the institutional, we 
shall see around us anything except the Christianity 
of Jesus Christ. Yet that is exactly the mistake 
which for centuries the church made. For the per- 
sonal power of Jesus, multiplied in apostolic lives, 
men very early began to substitute the outward 
power of the Church. Augustine saw the wicked- 
ness of the world, and also the power of the Roman 
Church to extend through the pagan world a system 
of compulsory baptism and education of men into 
Christianity. The papal power rose and fell. Then 
the Reformation began with a new contact of the 
Gospel with life through personal apostles of it. 
And there is no other way for Christianity to win 
its world-triumph than through the personal forces 
which it vitalizes. So long therefore as a benevolent 
or religious organization represents and multiplies 
personal service, so long it is useful ; whenever it 
stands by its own institutional weight, and for its 
own sake, ceasing to be vivified and fructified with 
personal influences, it cumbers the ground, and 
should be cut down. 

This principle holds true especially of the 
Church. So long as it is a living multii)lication of 
the influence of Jesus through personal powers 
united in one body, it is an Apostolic church ; but 
let it cease to be in any real sense a missionary 
church, — a point of application, tliat is to say, of 



1 66 Christian Facts and Forces. 

organized personal forces to the work of the Lord, — 
and, however venerable its customs, or distinguished 
its past, or rich its inheritance of name, property, 
or tradition, it would fall out of the true Apostolical 
succession, and fail of the work for which it was 
ordained of God. 

Jesus' tarrying with his disciples at Ephraim in 
the midst of the most active season of his ministry, 
even while the pilgrims to the feast were already 
seeking him in Jerusalem, contains thus a very 
necessary lesson for all of us who would learn how 
to live large and helpful lives. It is the lesson which 
it seems to me young men and women must learn be- 
fore they ever can begin to live as they are capable 
of living. Our natures quickly open toward things 
without, and respond happily to outward impres- 
sions. We are mirrors of life, before we are makers of 
our lives. And some go on for years and years 
mirroring the world rather than making their souls. 
This expansiveness of mind and heart toward the 
world is a natural impulse, and a true impulse. But 
there must be also a deepening of life, a concentra- 
tion of soul for life, a gathering of personal power. 
All serious times are hours when this outward, ex- 
pansive impulse is held in check for the time by this 
other deeper, intensive sense of one's soul, and its 
vital needs. And if we should not gain clear con- 
centration of soul in purpose, if we should fail of this 
deepening and inflowing from God of personal truth 
and power, then there would be danger that in the 
heat of the world, and under the glare of social life, 
our souls would evaporate from us into the world, 
and our life become indeed as a vapor that passeth 



Personal Power. 167 



away. But we cannot gather deep, vital personal 
power without religious experience. When the soul 
is thrown in upon itself, it is put back directly upon 
God. For at every vital centre of every living thing 
is God. At the springs of life is always the living ^ 
God. This religious experience, this deepening and 
intensifying, as well as purification, of the personal 
life, is an experience most truly and fully to be 
realized in the discipleship of Jesus Christ. Let the 
disciple go with the Lord to Ephraim and tarry with 
him, and we may observe what shall surely follow. 
The Christ discloses to the soul its true self. He 
brings out from our inmost being, and sets visibly 
before us, even in his own image, that true, diviner 
self, which God thought of as possible when he 
created us. And the knowledge of that both con- 
vinces us of sin, and at the same time fills us with 
a new desire and great hope ; it humbles us in a 
genuine repentance, and puts us upon a new life with 
an inspiring faith. Such an experience, call it con- 
version, or what you may, such a gathering of per- 
sonal force for life under the personal influence of 
Jesus Christ, has been with many the great epoch of 
their years, — as a new birth of soul in the Spirit of 
Christ. It was their call to apostleship. Tliat ex- 
perience has put them in the succession of true and 
consecrated souls. Life since then may have run too 
much to waste ; they may have been unprofitable 
servants; but, still kept by the grace of God within 
them, is that vital centre of personal good wliich 
may be quickened, and invigorated, and from which 
a greater devotion and happier may yet grow. 

God has many Ephraims whore lie provides for 



1 68 Christian Facts and Forces, 

our tarrying with the Christ. The opportunity of 
soul-quickening and deepening came to some of you 
in the preparation to meet a new responsibility or 
an approaching happiness. Others have found 
themselves left alone with the Spirit through some 
disappointment. Any call of life upon us may lead 
us for a brief season to turn in upon ourselves, and 
to seek for new gathering of personal power. Or 
sickness may have kept some strong man for weeks 
from his business, taken the man bodily out of his 
customary surroundings, and given him time to 
think. He learned in that Ephraim of his soul with 
his Lord to measure the whole striving of his life by 
a juster standard, to value at their true worth what- 
ever he has of culture, power, or money ; to know 
himself as he stands independently of all his posses- 
sions in the sight of God. He has seen again per- 
haps some heavenly vision of the new man in Christ 
Jesus which he saw in his youth, or which years 
ago dawned upon him at his conversion. Let him 
not dare to forget again as he goes about his work 
what the Spirit taught him when he tarried at 
Ephraim. God knows every place in our lives 
where we had time and opportunity to be quickened, 
and deepened, and vitalized anew by the Spirit. 

This special season of the year may prove to some 
such a time of the Spirit. This time of Lent gives 
opportunity to those who delight in life's outward 
happiness to come to themselves. They will enter 
again into that outward life with more heart, and a 
happier appreciation, if now their souls should 
deepen, and strengthen, and concentrate in the disci- 
ple's decision : from that decision as from an exhaust- 



Personal Power. 169 

less motive their life might ever afterward expand, 
and fill its whole opportunity of good, and overflow 
into all the joy of the Father's house. Let the 
Church, tarrying with its Lord for a season, become 
full of the personal power of Jesus, and it might 
do an Apostolic work wider, farther reaching, more 
redemptive of the city, the country, and the world, 
than any of us have ever seen or known. 



XIV. 
THE GREAT REQUIREMENT. 

''^nts ttivxt, takjt up tf)t txoss, nnti hlloio mt.'* — Mark x. 21. 

One afternoon in the year 1210, as Pope Innocent 
III., surrounded by a sumptuous retinue of prelates, 
was walking on the terrace of the Lateran, a com- 
pany of mendicants laid at his feet the articles of a 
new association. At their head was a young man 
who but a few years before had been foremost in 
every scene of merriment ; he had been a ^^ success- 
ful merchant, a gallant soldier, and one of the most 
popular of the sons of Assisi." But, while seeking 
military service and adventure, he had endured a 
protracted sickness; and when, upon his recovery 
and his return, his friends gathered at one of the 
gates of Assisi to welcome him, and merrily placed 
in his hand the sceptre of frolic, to their astonish- 
ment he remained grave in the midst of their 
festivities, as one not of them, and suddenly break- 
ing loose from his companions, (so the story runs,) 
he proceeded to the church, and before its high 
altar there was witnessed a wedding which has 
been celebrated by Italy's great poet, and is still 
represented in the same Cathedral by Giotto's art ; 
and at the wedding of St. Francis the name of the 
bride was Poverty, The solemn espousal of poverty 
by this youth of Assisi was no meaningless ceremony. 
To him the vow of his soul before that high altar 

170 



The Great Requirement, 171 

meant emptied coffers, surrender of the comforts of 
life, patient endurance of evil, and even self-torture, 
and withal a love of all created things so joyous 
and overflowing that, as he wandered among the 
mountains or over the plains of Italy, he would 
speak of the beasts of the field as his brethren, and 
the twittering swallows as his little sisters. The 
vow of self-sacrifice, and his espousal of poverty 
meant the unflinching prosecution of a work of 
moral purification for which Europe for at least two 
generations was better, and the founding and resolute 
administration of an order of missionary monks 
whom, it has been justly said, the violent learned to 
fear, the rich to respect, and the poor to love. The 
command of Christ, " Come, take up the cross, and 
follow me," was understood by St. Francis of Assisi 
to mean a life given up as entirely to a noble 
aim as the bow gives up the swift arrow to the 
mark. 

We read the story of St. Francis, and smile, and 
put it from us as a pleasing bit of medievalism. 
Such singular sacrifice might have place and fitness 
in that odd mosaic of medieval manners and life. 
It would not be in accordance with the sensible and 
soberer coloring of real life in this most prosaic of 
the centuries. Should the life of St. Francis be lield 
up in the pulpit as an example for us, a comfortable 
and well-dressed modern Congregation would rogard 
it as a romantic picture, and we sliould not think 
of imitating the visionary sainthood and unnatural 
asceticism of those spiritual heroes and horoinos of 
the middle ages. 

Nevertheless, what do these words of our Master, 



172 Christian Facts and Forces. 

concerning losing our life, and taking up the cross, 
mean to us ? 

Let us look at another picture which is not 
medieval, and which we cannot so easily put aside 
with a smile of complacent wisdom. The scene was 
in a city bordering on the wilderness. The time 
was about the year 30 of our era, and in the early 
Spring. One who was so human in all his sympa- 
thies, and yet so unlike all other men that he had 
become known as the Son of man, was in the way 
going up to Jerusalem. And a young ruler met 
him, and asked him that old and ever new question 
of the human soul concerning the eternal life. You 
have heard read this morning the account of that 
meeting, which made so great an impression upon 
the memories of all who witnessed the scene that we 
find it recorded in each of the three evangelists. And 
there may have come to us again the thought which 
the narrative so often has suggested, why did Jesus 
ask of that young Israelite a sacrifice seemingly 
so unnecessary ? and who then can be saved ? We 
may put the story of St. Francis from us as an idle 
tale ; but here for us all to look upon in the Gospels 
is this picture of the One Great Requirement ; — and 
is that only as a medieval painting to us ? How 
shall we catch the spirit of it, and in our lives, amid 
present surroundings, reproduce what the Lord 
would have us imitate in that commandment ? 

My friends, we shall never understand these Gos- 
pels of the life of Christ, if we read them as the 
scribes read the Scriptures. We must look beyond 
the letter, we must enter into the spirit of that hour 
when Jesus stood before the young ruler, loving him. 



The Great Requireme^it, 173 

and asking of him a great requirement, or else we 
shall not understand what its truth for all men is, 
and we shall turn from it utterly, or make but cari- 
catures of it in our poor efforts to reproduce it. 

If we would rightly understand this sacred narra- 
tive, we should not regard it as a chapter of dogmatic 
teaching to be taken by itself, but we should look 
upon it as a scene from real life to be studied, and 
interpreted, in its time and place in the ministry of 
Jesus. Remember it was while he was going up to 
Jerusalem that the young ruler met him. Jesus was 
on his way to the great sacrifice. It was no common 
time even in the life of our Lord. His hour was at 
hand. Some three years before he had gone to Cana 
of Galilee, and blessed a wedding-feast. A few 
weeks before he had entered a home of sorrow, and 
had restored to its happy friendship the brother who 
had been loved and lost. He had never asked those 
friends of his to give up their pleasant home amid 
the olives of Bethany. Never had his presence 
hushed the song of a single pure joy of the human 
heart. But now the great sacrifice of the ages awaits 
him in the holy city. He has taken liis disciples 
aside, and told them privately, even while the multi- 
tude are ready to shout Hosannas, that he must 
needs suffer. Think then, with reverent thought, 
what must liavc been the divine consciousness of 
Jesus when that young ruler, strong, liealthful, and 
conscientious, but witliout sign upon liim of sacri- 
ficial sympathies and self-denials, came to liim, the 
Christ, on liis way to tlio Cross. It was tlie sudden 
meeting of a conscientious and painstaking, and cold 
moral nature, satisfied in keeping for itself the right 



174 Christian Facts and Forces, 

way to heaven, and an Incarnate Love, full of all 
human sympathies and inwardly aglow with the 
purpose of an infinite sacrifice. It was a great Char- 
acter at its greatest, and before it our common recti- 
tude in its commonest complacency. It was the 
supreme Incarnation of what God is, before a fair 
representation of what selfish man at his best may 
be. Christ in the clear consciousness of the Love of 
God stands before man in the half-hearted obedience 
of his conscience. It is the supernal Good dwarfing 
all lesser good. It is the commanding Love making 
all easier sacrifice seem as nothing. It is God 
revealing the glory of his eternal Love to man in his 
poor selfishness. It is the Christ in his perfect sacri- 
fice of himself convincing you and me of sin. Never 
has scene like this been witnessed before or since : — 
The Christ from God on the way to the Cross, the 
ruler for a moment in his presence, meeting the great 
requirement of the greatest Character, and returning 
sad at heart to his possessions. Of how little worth 
those possessions seem when put in contrast with 
such a character. Nearly two years before a voice, 
not like the voice of man, had been heard giving 
new commandments, heralding strange blessings, 
and saying to the common people, " Ye therefore 
shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." 
And to-day man at his poor best came and stood for 
a moment before the Christ who was walking in the 
consciousness of his hour which was almost come; 
and at that meeting of the Divine and the human 
that strange promise of the Sermon on the Mount 
became the seemingly impracticable requirement 
which was laid upon our common humanity by that 



The Great Requirement. 175 

perfect character of incarnate Love ; " If thou wilt 
be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the 
poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven : and 
come and follow me/' 

In this passage of the Gospel we have for our imi- 
tation not the letter, but the spirit ; not a specific 
commandment, everywhere, and under all circum- 
stances, to be obeyed, but a Character revealing itself 
in its divinest power, to be chosen and loved by us, 
to be imitated and followed in all men's ways of life. 

What do these words, Take up the cross, go, sell 
that thou hast, give to the poor, follow me, mean to 
us ? That will depend upon how much perception 
of the real intention of Jesus we may have gained, 
upon how much willingness of heart we may have 
to perceive the true Spirit of Christ. 

Let us think of this further. Should imitation of 
that Spirit of life as it was revealed in this impres- 
sive scene, lead us to utter abandonment of our 
present possessions? Would the Christ who stood 
in his sacrificial purpose before that good and lova- 
ble, but spiritually commonplace man, bid us remove 
the pictures from our homes, the cheerful fire from 
the hearth, and all pleasure from our hearts? 

What is this Christian law of sacrifice? Is it 
annihilation of self? Is it '^ at enmity with joy"? 
My friends, we have indeed but little faith — not 
faith enough to bear the least trial, or witli 
which to look at any death — if we have not yet 
learned that God is over all, God Messed forever, 
and that life, and the joy of life, is the creation's 
primal law, and the creation's chief end. When we 
say, God is the Alpha and the Omega, wo confess 



176 Christian Facts and Forces. 

that blessedness and not pain is the first and the 
last. When we believe that God in his blessedness 
is from eternity to eternity, we believe that Life — 
full, perfect life — life and not death — -joy of life and 
not pain of death, — is the supreme law and universal 
good. If now we must needs know death and pain, 
it is because these unhappy facts have in some way 
found place, and become entangled, in the midst of 
things. They must be intermediate things, inciden- 
tal, temporary, not eternal, — not the end of the crea- 
tion, but only means to its end ; for the beginning 
and the end, the first and the last, is God, — and He 
who is over all, is God blessed forever. Life is the 
Creator's law ; death the creation's incident; blessed- 
ness is the supreme good, sacrifice the means to the 
final good. The Christ must needs suff'er, not forever, 
but once for all ; and in the same announcement it 
was foretold that he should be crucified, and that 
he should rise again. That supernal Character, the 
Incarnation of the Love of God, on its solitary way 
to the great sacrifice of the ages, met for a moment 
the prudent morality of the good man, and in the 
flashing of its self-revelation it became as a consum- 
ing fire to his hard, dry goodness ; but the supreme 
requirement of that divine Character was never de- 
structive of living joy. Jesus on that same sacrificial 
journey took little children in his arms and blessed 
them. Jesus did not ask sacrifices of his disciples 
because the loss and pain are virtues, but because 
through them God's will may be carried on to larger 
good. Let us not wrong the Son of man by putting 
him into any wrong relation to human life. Asceti- 
cism is not sacrifice. St. Francis of Assisi, were he 



The Great Reqicirement. 177 

living here and now, might do a nobler work for 
humanity by setting a good example as a Christian 
capitalist, upholding other men, building cleanly 
homes around his factories, and causing his success 
to bless his city, than he could possibly do by becom- 
ing a missionary mendicant. The Christian law of 
sacrifice has higher claims to-day upon the money- 
power of the world than could be met by any reckless 
abandonment of the world's stored up capital. And 
the law of sacrifice should never be interpreted as 
a commandment of misery. God does not love 
wretchedness. Christ in the hour of his full sacrifi- 
cial consciousness could speak not of his peace only, 
but also of his joy. 

The Lord has put us into this beautiful world not 
that we may make it a place of torture to us, or so 
abuse it that our hearts may become places of torment 
in it. There is a divine blessedness which all life 
reveals, a joy of the Creator in the light of the 
morning skies, in the ringing clearness of the winter 
air, in the laughing of the brooks unchained, in the 
early spring, in the fresh, abounding life of the 
summer fields, the colors of each flower, the ever re- 
newed brightness of the earth, and in the happiness 
of infancy around which " heaven lies." John Cal- 
vin, spending most of his theological days in Geneva, in 
the midst of the joy of that scenery which every trav- 
eller doliglits to remember, thougli his eye must often 
have rested upon tlie blue lake, and tlie purpling 
mountains, and before him many an evening the 
day's afterglow had bloomed upon the distant sky, 
never, says liis biograplier, in all his letters makes 
one allusion to the beauty of the world around him, 

12 



178 ChHstian Facts and Forces, 

and God's pleasure in it. Yet in these brief Gospels 
of the life of Jesus of Nazareth we still love to read 
of the glory of the lilies, and of the vine and the 
branches, and the place where there was much 
grass, and the fisher's boat, and the fields upon which 
the Saviour glanced, as men love still to look upon 
a field white for the harvest. A logic which is not 
open enough to let nature in, is not the logic of the life 
of the Son of man. A theology of the Cross of Christ 
which does not make love first and omnipresent, 
and full always of an eternal joy, is not the truth 
of God which we may learn from the life and the 
death of the Son of man. " He shall see of the 
travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied." 

The law of sacrifice, I would declare then, is not 
a law which puts a premium upon suffering in 
God's universe, or makes a virtue of unhappiness. 
It is a law which obtains in a universe made in joy 
and made for happiness ; it is a law of Him who 
gave his life for the world, and rose again, and sits 
henceforth expecting upon the throne of God. 

Having recognized, thus, that in the divine order 
sacrifice is the means, and the blessedness of God the 
end, that the Cross of Christ on earth is for the joy 
of heaven, and that it was not borne for its own sake, 
as though God could have pleasure in beholding suf- 
fering, we may ask once more, and more discerningly, 
the question whether every day our lives are held 
truly under that law of sacrifice, whether when that 
supreme Character may appear before us in some 
supreme hour, we shall go away grieved to our pos- 
sessions, or follow Christ to Jerusalem. This is a 
question not so much of the quantity of your gifts, 



The Great Requirement, 179 

though that may help determine it, but of the spirit 
of your giving. And by giving I do not mean 
merely giving money. I mean personal giving, often 
including money, but above all personal giving, like 
Christ's giving of himself to the world. I mean 
giving which begins in the heart, and becomes a 
power of the character, and, working from within as 
a new birth of the love of God in the soul, sweeps 
all obstructions of habit and obstacles even of in- 
herited temperament before it, and is the outflow 
of the life, the influence of the man, filling his whole 
possible opportunity of good, — even like that virtue 
of which we read, that it went out from Jesus 
and healed the suppliant who touched the hem of 
his garment. How much of that inward sacrificial 
virtue is there in our characters ready to respond to 
the slightest touch upon us? How much consecrated 
personal power is there in our churches, flowing out 
in all possible ways upon the city, and into this world 
for which Christ, in the glory of God, went up to 
Jerusalem to die ? 

In these days of social seriousness before Easter 
we may remember him who counted it joy to give 
his life for the world; we may see the Christ standing 
even now before this church, as he stood before that 
good man for a moment, as He was passing on his 
way to the Cross; and as we grow conscious of his 
Spirit in us, we may know whether our souls would 
follow Iiim whatever he would have us do. 

Only let us not this morning turn too easily away 
from that sacred scene of the Gospel. It is no medi- 
eval picture. It is a present revelation, and a present 
judgment. It is here in the Gospel to-day, for tlio 



i8o Christian Facts and Forces. 

church still to look upon. AVhat willmgness of sac- 
rifice for the people has the church of Christ in this 
country at its heart? The answer to that question 
is the prophecy of what this land will be at this cen- 
tury's close. To-day there is the scattered home 
missionary line, skirmishing with the godliness of 
an eager civilization on the far frontiers, and our 
Home Missionary society borrowing money to send 
out necessary supplies ! There, opening all around 
the horizon of Christendom, is the world-opportu- 
nity, and the laborers are few; and we believers, 
alas! are sometimes without faith enough in the 
Gospel to trust it gladly to any earnest heart that for 
Christ's dear sake would take it to the perishing. 
And here at home are the multitudes who hardly 
know how to live ; men discouraged or in tempta- 
tion who need a kindly, brave word, or a helping 
hand ; and young women, many of them, without 
homes or good company, working for what pittance 
they can earn, uneducated, and very likely uninter- 
esting enough except to the God who made them ; 
— and here are Christian girls, refined, and happy, 
yet without the inspiration of real service in life ; — 
are there not ways, which they by seeking may find, 
of girding themselves and serving those others, and 
in serving knowing who Jesus Christ is, and what 
eternal life is ? A religion that costs us nothing is 
of little value to ourselves or others. Are we spend- 
ing six days of the week in laying up treasures for 
ourselves, and then one in praying God to make sure 
to us our eternal salvation ? Master, " Grant unto us 
that we may sit, one on thy right hand and one on 
thy left hand, in thy glory." Is discipleship of Christ 



The Great Requirement, i8i 



to become then a crowned selfishness, or must there 
be some sign of the cross on every crown? "Ye 
shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of;" — 
Jesus knew the disciples, and the power and the task 
of the grace of God for the disciples, better than they 
knew themselves and the work in them to be wrought 
in Christ's name. There is more of the sacrificial 
spirit of Christ deep down in the heart of our Christi- 
anity than sometimes appears. In every crisis, it is 
true, in every day of the Son of man, there shall be 
first who shall be last, and last first. That poor 
unknown saint met duty like a martyr ; and that 
man who was a ruler in Israel flinched in the trial 
of his manhood. But there always has been, and 
there is still, the power of the Master's sacrificial 
spirit among the true disciples. There may indeed 
be sent times of trial to God's church to bring that 
spirit out. The wisest cannot tell what destructive 
forces are gathering beneath the surface of our 
industrial civilization. One heroic age of our coun- 
try has become a memory, and one of the last and 
most eminent of the patriots and lovers of liberty 
whose soul was fashioned, and tempered, and set 
aflame by it, has just passed beyond our praises or 
our blame.* Sometimes one could almost pray that 
providence might kindle again flaming questions of 
liberty and humanity, if only to bring out men, and 
to show once more the possibilities of sacrifice in 
women. 

But now there arc rung out no sudden alarms, and 
no great appeals of duty command us all; yet there 
is a work to be accomplished for Christ and our 

* Henry Ward Beetlior. 



1 82 Christian Facts and Forces. 

country, before which earnest souls should feel strait- 
ened until it be done; and we need for its vast 
achievement that spirit in all our churches which He 
required w^ho said to the young ruler, '' Come, take 
up the cross, and follow me." No community can be 
saved without sacrifice. Somebody's sacrifice is in 
every blessing we have received. No church can be 
great without sacrifice. No home can be blessed 
without the sacrificial spirit. No soul can becomic 
fit for the kingdom of heaven without the consecra- 
tion of the Spirit. 

We cannot put off the supreme requirement of 
that supreme Character which confronts us with its 
commandment of divine perfection, by contenting 
ourselves with any partial response to it. When 
Jesus on the way to Jerusalem asked that j^outh to 
give up his possessions, w^hat think you that the 
Lord cared for that man's money ? He did not need 
a shekel of it. Judas might have asked a higher 
price for his treachery if he had had more in the 
bag. The disciples did not need that ruler's prop- 
erty. They were better off without it. That fine 
example of charity in the first church at Jerusalem 
might have been lost from Christian history, if that 
ruler's possessions had been given and invested in 
real estate for the Christians at Jerusalem. It was 
not the ruler's money that Jesus cared for when he 
bade him sell all, and give to the poor. He wanted 
the man. And he could not get the man unless he 
saved him from his money. Jesus w^anted that 
man's will of life. He wanted that man's whole 
purpose. He wanted that man's heart. Money 
enough will go to the Lord's exchangers, if the church 



The Great Requirement, 183 

can put heart enough into the Lord's service. Where 
your heart is, there will your money be found also. 
And what humanity all around us needs is first and 
above all the heart of the church, freely, joyously 
given in Christ's name to Christ's service. 



XV. 

MISUNDERSTANDING CHRIST. 

from fttm, anlJ t!)t2 p^rai^-elj not t!)t tijins^ ft at b^u saili." — Luke 
xviii. 34. 

This verse of Luke's Gospel records the disciples' 
acknowledgment that at the time Jesus was going up 
to Jerusalem to be crucified they had not understood 
him. Luke takes pains to put into his narrative 
three distinct avowals that the disciples had misun- 
derstood Jesus' words. " And they understood none 
of these things ; and this saying was hid from them, 
and they perceived not the things that were said." 

No living men had known Jesus so well as those 
disciples had known him. They had been his near- 
est friends. They had been some three years with 
Jesus in his daily ministry. Yet the Christ must go 
to the hour of his trial in utter solitude of spirit, 
every hosanna of the people a misunderstanding of 
his sacrificial will, and not a thought of his chosen 
friends reaching into the deeper purpose of his obe- 
dience unto death. 

The disciples' failure to understand the Master 
suggests an always timely question for the followers 
of Jesus : What misunderstandings of Christ may 
still be lingering in Christianity? Is it possible 
that we may as strangely misunderstand our Master 
and Lord ? 

The question is the more pertinent and the more 

184 



Misunderstanding Christ, 185 

necessary because one reason for the disciples' failure 
to perceive the things that were said by Jesus on 
his way to the Cross, was the knowledge of him 
which they already possessed. Because already they 
partly understood him, and his Messianic mission, 
this other saying in its fuller revelation of the Christ 
was hid from them. They already understood him 
in some respects so well, that they were not ready or 
willing to receive a revelation which went beyond 
their thought of him. Their partial understanding 
of him, in their contentment in it, became an obsta- 
cle to a complete knowledge of him. The truth 
which they had already learned of him they could 
fit for the most part into their previous habits of 
thought concerning the Messiah, and it satisfied their 
ideas of what his kingdom on earth should be; so 
that when Jesus would begin with their partial 
understanding of him, and proceed to lead them out 
into a larger and diviner knowledge of God's will, 
they were not able to break loose from their comfort- 
able contentment in the truth which they already 
had received. Hence while these disciples cherish 
in their hearts the thought that the Messiah is 
already in the way which leads up to his kingdom, 
and their thrones, the Christ goes before them, alone 
in the Spirit, knowing that the Cross is first God's 
will, and then the coming of the kingdom of 
heaven. 

There may have been some willfulness in the dis- 
ciples' failure to understand new truth from Jesus ; 
very likely there was resistance of liabit, and obsti- 
nacy of desire, such as we may often observe in the 
way of men's larger knowledge of truth ; but it is 



1 86 Chris tzait Facts and Forces. 

clear also that the disciples stopped short, well satis- 
fied with some truths which they had already 
learned of Jesus, and thus were prevented from going 
on with Christ in his further revelation of God's 
will. 

Two truths in particular which they had learned 
better than any one else concerning Jesus, they 
allowed to stand in the way of their further under- 
standing of him. They had been taught his wonder- 
ful power. They had been eye-witnesses of his 
mighty works. They knew, as others had not had 
so good opportunities of knowing, that Jesus' miracles 
were not carefully prepared deceptions, or results 
of some studied mastery of occult arts. They 
knew that his miracles were spontaneous, and natu- 
ral to the Christ. They were the immediate outgo- 
ings of the power of the Man. He himself was the 
cause of which his works of healing were the effects. 
Virtue went out from him. He was always greater 
than his works. The Man was more than all that he 
did. That they had seen and learned. They began 
to believe that Jesus could do anything. This truth 
of the power of the Son of man they were ready to 
receive, and they stopped with the knowledge of it. 
He who had power from God could not be taken and 
killed by the Pharisees. So they grasped with eager 
hope the truth that Jesus was the promised Messiah 
of Israel, and missed the deeper truth of his char- 
acter, that God so loved the world. 

Then again the truth which they had learned bet- 
ter than any others of Jesus' wonderful kindness, and 
justice, and humanity, in their partial view of it, 
may have hidden from their eyes the full revelation 



Misunderstanding Christ, 



which he would have them perceive of his divine 
hfe. How could he who had power over death, and 
who had so pitied two sisters that he had restored 
their brother to them, and who had enveloped their 
lives in a friendship of wonderful daily thoughtful- 
ness, — how could he, having all power, go away from 
them, leave them comfortless, throw them back again 
upon the world, and disappoint their high hopes of 
him ? No wonder Peter thought it was impossible, 
and even said impulsively, "Be it far from thee. 
Lord ! " The truth of Christ's friendship which they 
did know prevented them from understanding the 
diviner secret of God's sacrificial love for the world, 
which they might have learned. So they who knew 
the Lord best, misunderstood him the most; and 
Jesus went before his disciples in a deeper purpose 
and a diviner thought than they perceived. 

You see thus how closely the question may always 
come home to Christians concerning tlieir under- 
standing, and misunderstandings, of Christ and 
his kingdom. And a brief glance at the history of 
Christ's revelation of the Father since those early 
days will serve to give to the question still more 
pertinency and point. For the history of Christ's 
church in this world has been one repeated process 
of partial understandings of Christ, with misuiulor- 
standings, and then new and larger understandings 
of his words. Men have learned some truth of 
Christ, and gone bravely off with it, and embodied 
it in the institutions of Christianity, or jnit it into 
their creeds, and stopped contented with tliat lesson 
of the Christ as though they understood \\\w\ ]hm*- 
fectly. And then that partial idea of what the Cios- 



1 88 Christian Facts and Forces. 

pel is, or the church should be, has proved a barrier 
to progress, and the stream has been checked, and 
the scum of many corruptions has gathered on its sur- 
face, until some refreshing from on high has swept 
again all barriers away. At first perhaps the new flood 
seemed to be a destructive torrent, but at length the 
purified stream, and more fruitful fields on either 
side, have proved that it was a new inflowing of 
power from on high. 

The history of the Christian church discovers this 
threefold process often repeated, — first some true, but 
partial lesson learned of Jesus Christ; then the 
Churches contentment with that lesson, and teaching 
the people to repeat it by rote ; and then some prov- 
idential task and trial, and under the necessity of an 
age the discovery of some new meaning in the old 
truths, or some fresh interpretation of the words of 
God which at first disciples had not understood, and 
a new Christian movement, a reformation, a greater 
work of faith, another of the days of the Son of man. 

It is always in order, therefore, for us to ask, Are 
we stopping short with lessons of Christ already 
learned ? Are we in aught misunderstanding Chris- 
tianity ? 

In order that w^e may bring this matter more 
closely home to ourselves some further preliminary 
remarks should be made. Our text reads like a 
devout apology of the disciples for their singular 
misunderstanding of Jesus Christ. The providence 
of God had taught them their mistake. And very 
instructive for us is the method by which God cor- 
rected the false perception of the disciples, and 
opened their eyes to true and larger knowdedge of 



Misunderstanding Christ, 189 

the Lord. They overcame their misunderstanding, 
and were brought to better understanding of Jesus 
Christ, through the trial and the task of their faith. 
These two, trials and tasks, are God's ways of cor- 
recting men's imperfect faiths. For you will recall 
how those disciples, at the time of the crucifixion, 
and while they were waiting in Jerusalem, learned in 
their disenchantment, and were taught through that 
fearful strain and trial of their faith, as they had 
never seen before, of what spirit Jesus was, and what 
his real mission to this world was ; and thus they were 
prepared to see and to become apostles of the risen 
Lord. That trial of their faith, while Jesus was 
mocked, and scourged, and delivered to death, and 
crucified between two thieves, and buried, — all the 
light blotted from their skies, all the proud ambition 
broken in their souls, — yet in his death a new, 
strange expectancy awakened in their hearts, and on 
the third day a vision seen which made all things a 
new world to them, — that trial of their faith was the 
Lord's method of teaching the disciples what before 
had remained hidden from them even in plainest 
words of Jesus. And then this knowledge of tb(^ 
new, larger truth of Christ's work was rounded out, 
and filled full of a steady, clear light to them, by tlie 
task immediately given them to do in the nanio of 
the crucified and risen Lord. They learned at IVn- 
tecost what Christianity was to be. Peter loanuHl it 
still further wlien a trial of his faith came to liiiu in 
a vision on the house-top, and wliile lie doubted 
what it meant, a work from Cod was givou liiin 
by the messengers at the door. St. Paul U^arucMl 
to know Christ after the Spirit witli an cvrr progress- 



I go Christian Facts and Forces. 

ive knowledge through the trials and the tasks of 
his ministry. And I might continue with many an 
historical illustration to show how the providence of 
God, at sundry times, has corrected inherited or con- 
genial misunderstandings of Christianity, and given 
to each notable Christian age its new theology by 
means of the trials and the tasks of its faith. Inter- 
esting, however, as such historical illustrations of 
God's methods are, let us seek rather to bring these 
general truths as quickly as possible to a focus upon 
ourselves. By our trial and our task of faith God's 
providence may be clearing up some of our mis- 
understandings of the Lord's words. 

Our trial of faith comes to us mainly from the 
intellectual side. It is witnessed by the difficulty 
which many of you men feel in forming strong con- 
victions on any religious subject. Ours is not a trial 
of faith by persecutions or martyrdoms. Occasion- 
ally we may be made to stumble over some hard 
piece of medievalism which has been left in the way ; 
but usually that proves to be only an irritation 
rather than a trial of our faith ; and in these days, 
even from a worldly point of view, it is no loss to a 
man to join a Christian church. The world has 
become in its manners and social usages so far 
Christianized that there is very little outwardly 
which he may be called upon to give up. It 
may cost him something to help support the 
Christian religion; but not nearly so much as the 
heathen often pay in the worship of their idols. 
Protestant Christianity seems to be the least expen- 
sive of the religions of the world, notwithstanding its 
frequent contribution-boxes, and foreign missions ! 



Misunderstanding Christ, igi 

Yet in our time we have had trial enough of faith 
from the intellectual side. Indeed, there are so 
many things now to be thought of, that religion, 
although acknowledged to be the chief concern, 
seems to be crowded out of the lives of many intel- 
lectual men. Religious questions, they think, can 
wait ; other problems of thought and life are press- 
ing. One peculiar trial of our faith arises from the 
dissipation of convictions among multitudinous 
things, newly discovered, partly known, everywhere 
rising up to interest us, and presenting to our 
reasons questions not lightly to be put aside. And 
the effect of this peculiar trial of faith is a certain 
faintheartedness among believers, or half-belief, or 
make-believe, or even a cowardly falling back and 
huddling together of frightened believers, like an 
army in a panic, upon old intrenchments from which 
they had marched out with banners flying. Such 
briefly is our trial of faith ; but put beside it, as 
God's providence does actually bind up with it, our 
task of faith. It is easy to see what that is. Is it 
not the great missionary work? I use the word \\\ 
its truest and broadest sense. Our task is the work 
of the missionary church. Our Christianity is noth- 
ing save as it is a missionary Christianity. It is to 
be a witness of Christ " both in Jerusalem;' — and 
that means for us in the center of our own city, 
— "and in all Judea," — that means for us all Now 
England, — "and in Samaria," — and that means in 
the Indian reservations, and on the far frontiers of 
American civilization, — "and unto the uttermost 
part of the earth." I need not delay to argno tlio 
matter; for what observant Christians do not i>er- 



192 Christian Facts and Forces. 

ceive that the task which is laid with urgent neces- 
sity upon our common Christianity, is to establish 
the kingdom of God here on this earth, in human 
society, and to make the whole world Christian ? A 
most singular providential coincidence surely, and 
very instructive for us, — this subtle intellectual trial 
of faith, and this great task of world-wide missions, 
laid in one and the same hour upon the Church of 
God. 

This twofold providence is bringing out for all 
who have eyes to see, a fresh interpretation of what 
Christianity is. And as we catch some glimpse of 
it, we find it inspiring and grand. We behold once 
more a lifting up of Christ himself before the world 
to draw all men unto him. We are going back to 
where the first disciples began their knowledge of 
the Christian life, even to Christ himself, to his char- 
acter, his life and death, his personal revelation of 
God and the will of God. In that hour when the 
disciples began to understand his words which had 
been hidden from them, when on that first day of 
the week they were gathered together, we read that 
Jesus himself stood in the midst of them. That scene 
is the frontispiece of Christian history. Jesus himself 
in the midst of his disciples ; — that is Christianity. 
Christianity, true, living Christianitj^, is not the 
Bible of the Protestants, not the Church of the 
Roman Catholics, not the creeds of the ecumenical 
councils. Christianity Aas a creed, but it is more 
than a creed ; it Aas a Bible, but it is more than the 
Bible ; Christianity is Jesus himself in the midst of 
men ; it is the Spirit of Christ in the life of humanity. 
Our trial and our task of faith are combining to 



Misunderstanding Christ. 193 

throw all churches back directly upon the Christ of 
the Gospels. Let biblical or historical criticism tear 
away from Christian beliefs anything that may prove 
to be adventitious, traditional, or unverifiable ; let an 
eager science press open door within door of this 
mysterious succession of things which we call nature ; 
suffer honest thought to penetrate as far as it may 
into the secrets of life, and the creation's history ; — 
at the beginning is a Power which we cannot com- 
pass, and at the end a Purpose which we cannot 
measure, and at the center, in the focus of all our 
earthly lights, a Character having the glory of God, 
which we cannot question. That Character is the 
ultimate of our moral knowledge. It is center and 
source of life in a new moral creation. It is revela- 
tion of God. It is motive-power of a world's salva- 
tion. Doubt, brought at last before that ultimate 
and commanding Character, meets the transcendent 
affirmation of God in the life of humanity. Christ 
is the " I am " of God confronting here upon this 
earth all our human denials. " Before Abraham 
was, I am ; " — Eternal righteousness and truth, Eter- 
nal Love dwells among men incarnate, and its Gos- 
pel never to be silenced, is, " I am ; '' " Verily, verily, 
I say unto you ; " " Believe me." 

Thus the trial of our faith presses us back to 
Christ himself; and no less the task of faith compels 
us to preach Christ, and constrains us, like the 
Apostle of the Gentiles, not to know any thing among 
men save Christ Jc^sus and hini cruciruMl. 

Observe how this ])rovi(lontial return of Cln'istian- 

ity to (^hrist himself in the midst of his disciples is 

correcting misunderstandings of him, is leading tho 

13 



194 Christian Facts and Forces. 

general Christian consciousness to seize vfith a new 
enthusiasm upon the vital, essential truths of the 
Gospel which meet the real wants of real life, and 
how, on account of our searching trial and our 
mighty task of faith, we are learning to pour con- 
tempt upon one after another of our hindering, and 
divisive, and paralyzing misunderstandings of what 
pure Christianity should be. The Church would 
loiter far behind the providence of God in the mis- 
sionary call of our century, should it linger and lag, 
overweighted, under the burdens of the inherited 
mistakes or dogmatisms of good men who have not 
always appreciated the simplicity of the Gospel, nor 
its universality. Jesus himself in the midst of his 
disciples, the Spirit of Christ in the midst of conse- 
crated men and women, — oh! this is not what a 
church has sometimes misconceived itself to be. This 
real Church of Christ is not a band of thinkers bound 
together by a confession of formal propositions 
mostly true ; nor is it a mystical body having its 
heart in a sacrament ; nor an elect company waiting 
for thrones; nor a favored society, suJSicient unto 
itself, a special assembly whose names are written on 
pew doors ! Not such is the conception of the Church 
which we see when we look back and behold Jesus 
himself, in the midst of his disciples, going about 
doing good, now on the streets of Capernaum, heal- 
ing the sick, now among the lepers and those pos- 
sessed with devils, now in the temple driving out the 
money-changers, or teaching the scribes a divinity 
simple and sincere as the love of God, and human as 
the joy of the Father over the prodigal who was lost 
and is found. Jesus himself, the serene, radiant, 



Misunderstanding Christ, 195 

helpful One, doing God's will, Jesus himself, the risen, 
adorable Master and Lord in the midst of his disci- 
ples whom he sends forth in his Spirit as his apostles, 
— oh, that is the true Church, the Church against 
which the gates of the hell of the city's lusts and sins 
shall not prevail, the Church to which all power is 
given ! Something like this, something more like this 
than we, or our fathers, have seen, is the Church of 
God for which men are looking, blindly, ignorantly 
ofttimes it may be, but after which the world is seek- 
ing as its social Messiah, for the salvation of the 
lives and the homes of the people in all these manu- 
facturing towns and villages of New England, and 
in every land, and now especially in India and 
Japan. In the name of the Son of man let us be 
ashamed of, and at any cost to our habits or our 
pride let us repent of, any ideas of the Christianity of 
Jesus Christ which we may have shared, which have 
been less broad, less sympathetic, less divinely 
human, than this vision of Jesus himself in the 
midst of his disciples in the world. 

And I want to leave this sermon resting in its 
more personal applications. We ought to search our 
conduct of life and our habits of thought to learn 
whether personally and privately we are still misun- 
derstanding the Lord's word to us, when we may 
come to a better understanding of it. Are we being 
mastered by the character of the Lord Jesus Christ? 
That is the real question of personal religion. Wliat 
does tliat mastery of a man involve? Anytliing 
more tliau I am now doing, or giving of mysdr? 
Anything other than I liavo boon doing for years, 
and years, and years? Some of you, who have long 



196 Christian Facts and Forces. 

heard Christ preached, have not many years more at 
the longest to live in this world, — five, ten, twenty 
years perhaps longer, if no accident overtakes you, 
and you are permitted to fill out the full circle of 
the life allotted to man. Is there anything left that 
you have not yet brought under the mastery of the 
Lord Jesus Christ? Do you own anything over 
which you cannot write in good conscience, Christ 
is Lord ? Can you with sincere judgment subscribe 
beneath every paragraph and codicil of your life's 
will and testament, as you pray here in this church, 
" For the sake of Jesus Christ, Amen? " Because our 
whole will and testament of life shall be probated 
not on earth merely, but by the Lord who has given 
to every man his talent, and also these opportunities 
of good in which any talent may be put to his 
exchangers and multiplied. 

To us all, old and young, the duty comes this day 
once more of judging for ourselves, and deciding, 
whether we have been misunderstanding, whether 
we are willing to understand, the word of God to us 
personally through the life and death of Jesus Christ. 
Lord what would'st thou have me do ? I own thy 
divine mastery; what would'st thou have me do? 
I am as nothing ; but I will do it. By thy grace, 
Lo, I come to do thy will, God. 



XVL 

PUTTING THE WITNESS AWAY. 

'* But ft^ t\iti pri£5tj5 took tounstl t^at t^tj mi^i put 5/a?aru5 also 
to halt ; IttmxBt tftat i^ ttason of \m mans ^^ ^6-^ It'^s tomt ahja^, 
anibf itlitbtl^r on I-esuK/'— John xii. lo-ii. 

For the past few Sundays I have taken my texts 
from those scenes in the life of Christ which the 
EvangeHsts represent as having occurred at this 
period of the year between the closing days of Feb- 
ruary ' and the early part of April. During these 
weeks the Son of man dwelt in the certain and near 
prospect of his Cross. His words and his character 
at this time evidently made a supreme impression 
upon the disciples, — the Gospel narratives grow full 
and clear at this epoch of our Lord's life ; and if we 
have eyes to see the wonderful sacrificial Character 
which then began more fully to disclose its divine 
purpose and power to the disciples, and which after- 
wards they understood, we shall find our lives brought 
under a commanding influence, superior to all other 
motives which may attract us. Let a man once really 
see and feel these two things, — the humanity which 
he shares with all others, and the salvation of that 
humanity in the Person of Jesus Christ, which he 
with all men may possess ; — let a man once really 
know these two things, the sinful, anxious, loveless 
humanity which is lost in the world, and the rich, 
full, and redeemed humanity which is found in the 
Person of Jesus Christ in the midst of his disci [)les, — 

197 



198 Christian Facts and Forces. 

and the clear perception of these two opposite things, 
contrasted as death and life, will henceforth hold 
that man under the power of a new motive, and 
pervade his whole soul with a consecration and en- 
thusiasm for the kingdom of God's sake. 

The narratives of the Gospels which depict the 
closing scenes of Jesus' life bring out the most marked 
and startling contrasts. We see Jesus on his way to 
the Cross, drawing near to Bethany; and within the 
walls of Jerusalem we look upon another scene in 
the tragedy of the sin of the world, and observe what 
the chief priests and rulers of the Jews w^ere doing, 
in the hour of Christ, when he was approaching 
Jerusalem. Beyond the holy city, in the quietness 
of Ephraim, Jesus has been revealing God to willing, 
but misunderstanding disciples ; and already on the 
way up to Jerusalem he begins to show himself 
openly to the people. Within the city of the prophets 
those Jews have been taking counsel, and plotting 
together; blinding each other, and strengthening one 
another in hatred and pride, they have been prepar- 
ing to enact, hardly knowing what they did, the great 
crime of history. 

The conduct of those men in Jerusalem presents 
the chief difficulty in the way of the hope which 
all Christlike hearts would cherish of some final 
universal salvation. For those Jews in Jerusalem, 
hardening themselves against Christ, reveal the power 
of the human heart to grow malignant, and to be- 
come utterly blinded to truth, even while the Life 
of Love is an increasing light of God's presence 
round about it. That council of desperate rulers 
which was held while Jesus was on his way to Jeru- 



Putting the Witness Away. 199 

salem, shows how obdurate the human will may- 
grow when divinity draws near its gates, and the 
Christ could weep over its destruction. The thought 
that checks and chills the natural Christian hope 
that all souls at last may be restored, does not arise 
while we are walking with Jesus on his way to the 
city. He has come to seek the lost. Salvation can 
hardly depend upon one's happening to be sitting 
by the way-side when Jesus of Nazareth is passing 
by. He who came to seek the lost, — shall he not in 
his own times, and to the utmost power of his love, 
seek up and down all the ways of his creation for 
those who are lost ? But the difficulty is that those 
Jews in Jerusalem, having eyes, see not ; and though 
none of the people are more darkly lost than they, 
they will not be found. "And ye would not!" was 
Jesus' lamentation over the city of the prophets. 
The mercy of the Lord — so Israel was assured even 
in the Old Testament, when revelation w^as not yet 
far from Sinai — is a mercy which endureth forever, 
a mercy from everlasting to everlasting. We may 
easily believe that the Love which by its nature is 
eternal cannot subject itself in its divine seeking to 
limits of time or place. The difficulty in the hope 
of universal salvation is not to be found in the nature 
of God, not at the Cross of Christ, not in any tem- 
poral bounds put upon the omnipresence of the 
Spirit of Christ; but the obstacle, at which our 
knowledge must stop, lies deep in the will of man, 
and its fearful possibilities of evil. We recall how 
those Jews at the very hour of the revelation of the 
most adorable Character upon which luiman eyes 
had ever looked, blinded themselves to its glory, 



200 Christian Facts and Forces. 

mocked and rejected it, crucified Love, and would 
nail Truth itself to a cross. That tragic scene, and 
all repetitions of that fearful exhibition of the power 
of sin, do not permit us to accept as an induction 
from human experience the dogma of a universal 
salvation ; as, on the other hand, a simple deduction 
from tiie Christlikeness of God's nature, as that is 
revealed in the New Testament, leaves us no reason 
to doubt, or to deny, that God in Christ to the utmost 
extent of moral possibility will be his own mission- 
ary, the first and the last, to all souls of men ; — our 
missionary service is but our part and privilege in 
the divine work of the redemption of the world. 
Exactly what shall become of Caiaphas and those 
Sadducees, and of Judas too, when Christ's kingdom 
shall have reached its completion, his judgment 
come, and God will be all in all, these Gospels 
do not undertake to declare; and he who would 
presume to preach in this matter the whole counsel 
of God is in danger of being bold beyond what is 
written, or can be known by us in our present school- 
term of existence. That man may need to be warned 
against the mistake of the scribes who would put 
upon our ancient and apostolic Christianity any 
burden of his private interpretation too great for it 
to bear. Meanwhile, this one revelation is plainly 
to be seen, — and it were harmful sentiment to turn 
our eyes altogether from it, for human history shows 
and repeats in a thousand scenes this one tragic 
spectacle, — Jesus Christ in the sacrificial power of 
love drawing near the city, and men within, even in 
mercy's hour, preparing to crucify him. 

From the description of what was passing in the 



Putting the Witness Away. 201 

minds of those men in Jerusalem, I have taken for 
our special lesson this morning a text which dis- 
closes an incidental and subsidiary thought which 
they entertained. " They sought to put Lazarus also 
to death." We are so bound together in one common 
humanity that we can enter into the consciousness 
of the best and the worst of men, and understand 
both the great virtues and the great crimes of history. 
We hear the story of some magnificent deed and we 
can feel burning within us the high resolves which 
made that heroism possible ; our thought can inter- 
pret another's noble deed. And the skillful lawyer, 
pleading in our courts, knowing the common motives 
and the common experiences of men, will unravel 
the skein of circumstances which bound the crim- 
inal in a net-work of temptations, deceptions, and 
evil deeds ; and a jury of twelve ordinary men, from 
their common knowledge of human passions can 
judge whether the crime were possible or not, as 
another man stands charged with it. We are all 
of us sinful enough to comprehend the sin of the 
world. On the one hand we have instincts of the 
true, we have intimations of the Spirit within us, 
pure enough, and noble, to enable us to follow the 
Son of man who is in the way going up to Jerusa- 
lem ; and also we are sinners enough to enter into 
the counsels of the Jews within the city. 

It is not difficult for us to understand the simple 
reason given in the narrative why they would put 
Lazarus also to death. " Because that by reason of 
him many of the Jews went away, and believed on 
Jesus." 

That thought of those priests, that desperate 



202 



Christian Facts and Forces. 



thought, was only an exaggeration of a common ten- 
dency of our human nature. That counsel of the 
chief priests presents in a magnified form a natural 
disposition which lies in a diminutive and unde- 
veloped state, but capable under temptation of great 
possibility of evil, in the minds of all of us. As we 
are capable of it, and in what may seem unimport- 
ant habits may have yielded to it, it lies within us, 
one of the evil dispositions of human nature, one of 
the possibilities of sin and death, which we have 
inherited, and from which we should seek to become 
free. 

For consider how natural that counsel of those 
Jews was. They had no special spite against Lazarus 
himself. He was a quiet man apparently, who had 
lived a quiet life out under the olive-trees at Bethany. 
But they did not wish Christ to take their power from 
them, and although as consistent Sadducees they 
could not allow themselves to believe in the resur- 
rection, the continued existence of Lazarus was an 
unwelcome suggestion to them of its possibility, and 
an evidence of it which was misleading the people. 
They would not receive any proof of the resurrec- 
tion, nor tolerate Jesus, preaching the Gospel of it. 
Dogmatists always must close their minds against 
evidences of new truth. Naturally they seek to put 
the witness to it out of the way. Of old they 
thought of killing Lazarus. Fifteen hundred years 
later the same men would have thought of putting 
him to the rack, and torturing him until he 
recanted. Eighteen hundred years later they would 
have thought only of breaking down his influence 
by misrepresentation and appeals to popular preju- 



Putting the Witness Away. 205 

dice in the newspaper organs of their sect. The 
world moves, and Christ^s Spirit grows in the 
thoughts of men's hearts, and the same evil disposi- 
tion which of old would have put Lazarus to death 
assumes in our counsels and conversation milder 
and more polite, but perhaps hardly less sinful 
forms. If we do not want to receive Christ, or some 
truth of his revealing, the next and natural thing for 
us to do is to put out of the way anything that may re- 
mind us of it. We have done something like that in 
lesser things a thousand times. Some truth we had 
made up our minds we would not listen to, and we put 
its Lazarus out of the way. Some word of the Lord 
drew near us, and was about to revolutionize our life 
for us, and we did not want to see our world changed, 
and we thought how we might silence its chosen 
witness. 

I might draw many an illustration of this com- 
mon desire of human nature to put Lazarus out of 
the way, from the counsels of men's hearts in other 
than religious matters. Do you not remember, some 
of you? those troubled days before the war, when the 
storm portent was already visible in our Southern 
skies, and the cloud was growing, and there were 
men in our Northern cities who would not see it, 
merchants who did not wish to have their commerce 
interfered with and their profits stopped, timid and 
selfish politicians who for the sake of office, and 
their case, were willing to reject the truth of free- 
dom and the redeemed nation which was already on 
its way througli suff*ering towards its kingdom and 
its crown; and because those men would not bo its 
disciples, ready to give \\\) all for it, they sought also 



204 Christian Facts and Forces. 

to put down every Lazarus whose presence was lead- 
ing the people away after that new faith ; and even 
when its hour was at hand, they said, " It cannot 
be ; this Truth shall not reign over us ; we will not 
let it come and take the peace of compromise away 
from our nation : we have no king but Cotton ! Let 
us hustle down from the platforms, and put out of 
our pulpits all men who are witnesses of the higher 
law, for the people are going away after them ! " 
Truly it is human nature, and we all share it, to put 
Lazarus also to death. 

I might open the book of the lives of the wit- 
nesses and martyrs in the generations past, and find 
on many a page illustration of this our inherited 
and common tendency of evil which leads men's 
thoughts to take counsel against Lazarus ; as Roman 
emperors, when they would stop the growth of the 
new religion, became persecutors of Christianity, 
and as Julian the Apostate with a more crafty toler- 
ance sought to suppress Christianity by prohibiting 
Christian schools ; or as the papacy, in its effort to 
suppress the better spirit stirring in its midst, sent 
Savonarola to the stake ; as priestcraft would have 
shattered the telescope in which the heavens began 
to reveal their glory ; and as even to this day we 
sometimes imagine we can prevent wild social move- 
ments which threaten our vested rights, by sturdily 
refusing to inquire what unheeded truths may pos- 
sibly lie beneath them, or what more human Gospel 
may be waiting to enter all our cities. But it is 
never candid, or quite honest, to think of putting 
Lazarus also to death. 

I wish, however, to trace this common tendency 



Putting the Witness Away, 205 

in our minds through some of its religious pro- 
cesses. 

An obvious and gross exemplification of it is the 
counsel of irreligious men to put the Church, or the 
Bible, out of the way. Religion cannot be thrown 
off by the people while these witnesses remain. 
Therefore ridicule the Bible, and attack the Church. 
And in this matter the instinct of irreligion is not 
on a false scent. The social Sadducees cannot secure 
their reign in an anarchical humanity, so long as 
the people have the Bible in their homes, with its 
Hebrew teaching of the sovereignty of God's law, 
and so long as the churches stand to bear witness 
to the Gospel of Christ. The Christian Church is to 
the successive generations what Lazarus was to those 
common people who came, " not for Jesus' sake only, 
but that they might see Lazarus also, whom he had 
raised from the dead." For the Christian Church, 
so far as it breathes the Master's spirit, is as one 
raised from the dead to newness of life. It exists as 
the continual proof and witness among men of the 
divine Power which has rolled away the stone from 
the sepulchre of man's death in sin, and said with a 
loud voice, " Come forth." The napkin indeed may 
be still bound over the face of the witness to Christ's 
power, and the smell of the corruptions of the world 
still be about the garments of the Church; but, 
dumb and scarce saved from the power of evil 
though it may sometimes seem to be, it is living, 
and it witnesses to a new life of humanity; it pro- 
claims by its mere presence here the redeeming grace 
of God. As it takes up again familiar duties in a 
grateful love, and looks out to behold a fresh light 



2o6 Christian Facts and Forces. 

and a new sanctity upon this old earth, and abides 
at the hearth of humanity in a love possessed now 
of an assured consciousness of immortality, the 
Church of Christ, living, redeemed, sanctified, is the 
true witness to the Christ from God. Atheism, 
anarchism, the powers of darkness, must put this 
Lazarus to death, or the people will go away, and 
believe on Jesus. 

There was one thing which those Jews in Jerusa- 
lem seem not to have taken sufficiently into their 
counsels against Lazarus also. Even had they suc- 
ceeded in ridding themselves of Lazarus' uncomfort- 
able presence, they would still have been compelled 
to confront in their temple Jesus himself. He did at 
length meet them on their own ground. He went 
to Jerusalem. He taught in the temple. He stood 
before the Sanhedrim. " Behold, the Man ! '' Be- 
hold those chief priests and rulers. " I judge no 
man," said Jesus. " And yet if I judge, my judgment 
is true." 

Our witness to Christ we grant is imperfect. Laz- 
arus may net always have borne in mind through 
what a mighty change he had passed. The old ways 
come back, and the new life may seem at times like 
a dream. But, nevertheless, there is renewed Chris- 
tian character enough in any common church, al- 
ways present, to bear witness to the Christ who has 
raised it from its death of sin. It is not altogether 
candid, nor honest, to let that present and living 
proof of Christ be to a man's reason as though it 
were not. 

Let us trace this evil tendency of our thoughts still 
nearer and closer. There are hours when the Christ 



Putting the Witness Away. 207 

draws nigh the cities of our souls. There are per- 
sonal approaches and appeals of the Lord to our 
characters. For the religion which we profess, and 
to which the Church is called to testify by its expe- 
rience of redemption, is not a merely intellectual 
creed, nor emotional state ; it is a creed of charac- 
ter ; it is a state of life. And Christ has many and 
various forms of appearing among the disciples, the 
same true Master and Lord in all. Christ may come 
near us from God in a duty, in some privilege, in an 
opportunity, in a clearer perception of truth. How 
do we receive these approaches of our Lord ? What 
counsel do our thoughts take concerning the things 
w4iich may remind us of him ? There was a duty 
drawing nigh in the name of the Lord ; we saw it 
would interfere with our plan of life. It might dis- 
turb our ease ; it might spoil our pleasure ; it might 
break our dream of power; it might leave us even 
out of place, or poorer in pocket. We began to be 
afraid that our thoughts would so go out tow^ards it, 
and dwell upon it, that some day we should find 
that duty in the name of Christ reigning over us. 
And there was something near at hand which re- 
minded us of it. At least we could get rid of that. 
It may have been the sight of a friend. We avoided 
that friend. It may have been some spectacle of 
want or suffering. We passed by on the other side. 
It may have been some inward feeling, some thought, 
which, whenever it came to us, recalled that duty, 
suggested that sacrifice, was a witness to that one 
thing wliicli we ought to do. And we took pains to 
avoid those feelings or thoughts; wx hurried from 
anything that might bring them before us. So we 



2o8 Christian Facts and Forces. 

remembered to forget that duty. We put its Lazarus 
where he would not trouble us. 

Christ draws near souls sometimes in some new, 
almost strange sense of faith, or hope, or possibility 
of life richer, and truer, and happier. It is with us 
as though a door were for a moment flung open into 
some lovelier world, and radiant spirits strong and 
full of life passed before us, and we see what better 
days might be for us also, and then we turn, and 
other desires of life gather quickly around us, and 
" the vision splendid '' fades ^^ into the light of com- 
mon day." We belong to the world again ; we throw 
ourselves with fresh abandonment into it; we enjoy 
its frolic, and are for the most part happy and care- 
less enough ; but the memory of that door, once 
flung open into something truer, and diviner, dwells 
still within us. That vision keeps coming back to 
us, our soul's witness to Christ. Will we put that 
witness also to death ? 

In those days of old, when Christ came to Bethany, 
Lazarus was a proof of immortality to all who saw 
him. His presence on earth testified to a power 
which is not of this earth. The evidence of eternal 
life is always present, stronger than death, in our 
perpetual human sense of God, in our witness 
of conscience, in the instinct which cannot be 
silenced of human love. Little account indeed may 
this witness of God in us be able to give of itself as 
we question it ; little memory may it have of its 
hour of awakening in the soul of man ; but it is 
here with us, and in the life of humanity, even as 
Lazarus was in the home of Bethany, the living wit- 
ness of the word of Jesus Christ. We have this real, 



Ptttti7ig the Witness Away, 209 

vital, consciousness of God and hope of immortality 
present with man to this day, God's proof, and God's 
power in the thought and the heart of humanity. 
It were not candid, it is not honest, to ignore it, or to 
plot how we can put this witness of God to death in 
the thoughts of our hearts. Let us cherish and 
honor it, and keep it at its true worth, as the witness 
and pledge of the Divine Power which is around us, 
and which is always repeating its miracle by bidding 
true life come forth from the dead. 

Question, study, investigate, doubt, inquire, reason, 
as the mind must or may ; Jesus Christ never for- 
bade any man to ask his question of him ; — but let us 
be careful, — as we would not reject God himself, and 
blind ourselves to his revelation, — let us be careful, 
how we turn from, or neglect, or wish to put out of 
the way any presence, or word, or duty, which wit- 
nesses of Diviner things than we know, and which 
may prove to be to our experience of the world as that 
man was to the disciples the witness by whom 
Christ's power has been confirmed. 

Let me leave the lesson of the text with any to 
whom Christ is drawing very nigh, and who really 
intend some day to crown him in their lives. Do 
not seek to put out of mind those thoughts, those 
suggestions, and those remembered words, or those 
witnesses of your own experience, by which often 
you have been almost persuaded to let yourselves bo 
Christians. 



14 



XVII. 

A STUDY FOR A DOCTRINE OF THE ATONE- 
MENT. 

''3Si!)oIlJ, ^t so up to IzxmKltm ; mtst})t%on of matt sWl ie Mihmts 
unto tf)^ tW prusts anlj strities ; Kuis tfit^ sjall ^oithmn f)im to l:szKt\}, 
mts sWl Mihzx Jim unto ti^^ (&zntihs to motX anir to Siourigje, anif to 
txmii^ : an^ tt^ ti^irlJ IJaj t^ jefiall Juerais^itr up." — Matt. xx. 18--19. 

These Scriptures disclose Jesus' final consciousness 
of the necessity of his sufferings. He knew that his 
life was to be finished under the law of suffering for 
sin. The cup could not pass from him. 

That law of suffering for sin under which he must 
bow in his sinless majesty, as though he himself were 
worthy of death, was no outward necessity, or com- 
pulsion of physical force. The miracle-worker could 
have saved himself from those poor, cowardly Jews 
in Jerusalem. No hostile power led the Lord as a 
captive in the way up to Jerusalem. Jesus knew 
that at his command legions of angels were waiting. 
Having all power, he submitted himself to some uni- 
versal moral law of suffering for sin. The doctrine 
of the atonement is an attempt on the part of believ- 
ers to comprehend that higher law of suffering in the 
forgiveness of sin. The Gospels declare the fact of 
Christ's death for us, and disclose Jesus' clear and 
certain consciousness that his sufferings were neces- 
sary for the completion of his work. 

But the New Testament dwells mainly upon the fact 
that Christ must needs suffer, and affords only passing 
210 



A Study of the Atonement, 2 1 1 

glimpses into the reasons in God's mind for Christ's 
death. To accept the simple fact, and to build all 
our hopes upon it, is the chief concern of our Chris- 
tian faith. Yet the Gospel is a gift of God to the 
human reason, as well as to the human heart, and 
consequently the Church has always pondered over 
the deep necessities in the holy love of God for the 
atoning sufferings of our Lord. 

In other than religious matters we are not content 
to rest in the simple facts which may present them- 
selves to our observation, but we seek constantly to 
bring all the facts of our experience into relation and 
order, or to find the place of each separate thing 
under some one general law of being. This is the 
scientific habit of mind, and it is the strongest men- 
tal habit of our age. Theology, therefore, as it would 
fall in with this resistless tendency of men's minds, 
will seek to bring the moral, spiritual, and divine 
elements of human life and history under some con- 
ception of law, and to view, especially, all the Chris- 
tian facts as events in one divine order of the uni- 
verse. Biblical faiths which, taken singly, might seem 
incredible become reasonable faiths when they are 
seen to constitute one consistent and harmonious 
order and law of revelation. I must believe that in 
answer to the prayer of reason for light, and in reward 
for modern scientific fidelity, God is discovering to our 
Christian theology conceptions of the supreme facts of 
our religion in wliich tlicy still command rational con- 
sent. We are learning to see that the supernatural is 
most natural ; and to read creation and history as 
one revelation and Gospel of divine truth and love. I 



212 Christian Facts and Forces, 

think profound reasons may be won from the depths 
of modern scepticism for new faith in the Incarnation, 
the miracles, the atoning death, and the resurrection 
of Jesus Christ, as these events are regarded as con- 
stituting one divine order and disclosing one law of 
love. In the growing conviction that all the Chris- 
tian faiths are in profoundest accordance with ultimate 
law, I wish to bring to your thoughts this morning 
a study for the doctrine of the atonement. I call it 
only a study for a doctrine, because no creed con- 
tains a complete doctrine of Christ^s atoning sacrifice. 
And one reason why churches have been divided, 
and theology itself brought into contempt in the 
world, is because men have gone off satisfied with 
their studies of God's truth as though these were the 
truth itself, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
truth. 

The explanations which believers in other times 
have sought to give of the reasons why Christ must 
needs sufi'er, have been efforts on their part to bring 
the fact of Christ's death into some intelligible relation 
to their prevalent ideas, and general habits of mind. 
It is a very interesting study to trace the connection 
between the theology of the Church concerning 
Christ's work, and the leading ideas, or current phi- 
losophies of different times. In this manner, by the 
effort of each age to interpret Christ and Christianity 
to itself, all our traditional theories, or doctrines of 
the nature of the atonement have been formed. The 
early Christian fathers, for instance, lived in a world 
which in accordance with much traditional philos- 
ophy of their age they were predisposed to look 
upon as a world belonging to Satan, and justly for- 



A Study of the Atonement, 2 1 3 

felted to him by sin. Naturally, therefore, in accord- 
ance with the prevalent thought of their day, they 
regarded the death of Christ as a ransom which Jesus 
paid for sinners to the Evil One. Christ went down 
to death for man, but the devil, outwitted by the 
wisdom which he had sought to deceive, could not 
hold within his power the divine Hostage after he 
had let the captives for his sake go free. We may 
smile at this primitive and crude attempt to under- 
stand why Christ must needs suffer, but we may 
profitably remember that to the ancient fathers it 
was an endeavor to bring the fact of Christ's death 
into harmony with their thought of the world, and 
precisely that every Christian generation, which 
would be honest with itself, will seek to do. This 
primitive conception of Christ's death as a ransom 
paid to the devil, lost something of its crudeness in 
the more spiritualized thought of the later fathers 
who still held it ; and from the first it represented a 
genuine experience, in the early Church, of redemp- 
tion by the power of Christ from the evil of the 
world. 

Several centuries later Anselm thought out his 
masterly conception of the satisfaction of God 
through the atonement of the Godman. Again in a 
great thinker's mind the Cross of Christ was set in 
the midst of the thought of an age. For Anselm's 
theory of satisfaction is thoroughly Germanic in its 
origin, and can be understood only as we familiarize 
ourselves with the Germanic ideas of tlio reparation 
which maybe made for an offense to the person who 
has been injured. Eitlier some personal satisfaction 
through some recompense worthy the lionor of the 



214 Christian Facts and Forces. 

person injured, and adequate to the offense com- 
mitted, must be rendered, or punishment must be 
inflicted. The satisfaction was not thought of as 
some legal equivalent of the punishment of the law, 
but to the Germanic sense of right either some fit- 
ting satisfaction or punishment was the rule of 
honor.* The sense of personal right, and of what 
may be due in honor to it, pervades Anselm's thought 
of the satisfaction which Christ by his act of atoning 
suffering has rendered to the honor of God. So 
chivalry passed by, and gave its interpretation of 
the Cross. 

Still later the conceptions of the atonement, vari- 
ously modified, which we have inherited through 
Calvinism, were largely drawn from, and corre- 
sponded to, juridical and governmental ideas which 
belong to Roman jurisprudence and the common 
law. The conception, for example, of Christ's death 
as the payment of a debt by substitution, is in ac- 
cordance with the old common law principle that 
any debt, however large, may be redeemed by any 
thing offered, and received, as an accepted substitute 
for its redemption. 

To many thoughtful minds, however, these tradi- 
tional conceptions of the atonement have grown to 
be distant, and unreal ; they sound to them like far- 
off murmurs of receding tides. 

* For a thorough discussion of this important distinction between 
Anselm's Germanic idea of satisfaction or punishment, and our 
current Roman idea of satisfaction as equal to punishment, I would 
refer the theological reader to an article upon ^* The Roots of 
Anselm's Conception of Satisfaction'^ in the Theologische Studien 
und Kritiken^ 1880, ersies Heft, 



A Study of the Atonement, 215 

What we need to do is to bring all Christian facts 
and faiths into closest and most vital contact with 
our own natural habits of thought. We should wish 
to make Christian truths seem perfectly familiar and 
real in our natural ways of thought. And one glance 
down some line of our personal experience at the 
Cross of Christ, were worth more to us than any 
scholastic explanation of Christ's atoning sacrifice. 

I shall proceed, accordingly, to indicate some per- 
sonal ways in which it seems to me we may learn to 
enter, in some degree, into Jesus' consciousness that 
he must needs suffer. Yet only in some degree, and 
in no full measure, can we hope to comprehend in 
our human experience the mind that was in Jesus. 

The open and most natural way of thought for us 
to take, in our desire to understand this most sacred 
truth, seems to me to be in general as follows : Let 
us begin by observing our own poor attempts at for- 
giving one another, learning what we must needs do, 
or suffer, in forgiving those that trespass against 
us, and then from our human experience dare to 
reason and to think up and on, Christwards and God- 
wards, until the love of God in Christ's atonement may 
seem to us the larger truth in which all our human 
knowledge of forgiveness is contained. Study what 
forgiveness of injuries involves to the most Christian 
man or woman, learn what forgiveness of wrong 
may cost the most Christlike heart, and from 
such knowledge gain the means of understanding 
why the Christ from God must needs suffer on the 
Cross. If we have not been compelled by some bit- 
ter experience of our own to learn the moral neces- 



2i6 Christian Facts and Forces. 

sities of suffering in forgiving sin, let us search with 
reverent sympathies the depths of the trouble into 
which others have been plunged by some erring one 
to whom they were bound by vital ties ; learn how 
father, mother, wife, must needs suffer in the con- 
tinued charity, and shielding love, and ever open 
forgiveness of the home towards one who has gone 
forth from it, unworthy of it, and been lost in the 
world; — and through such experience, and such 
knowledge of sin and of forgiveness, and of human 
suffering for it beyond expression, with humble, and 
tender thought enter into Jesus' consciousness of us, 
and Jesus' knowledge of the necessity of his suffer- 
ing for us, as He went to drink the cup which could 
not pass from him, and to give his life for ours upon 
the Cross. 

Such in general is the vital method, the personal 
way, in which we may study the doctrine of the atone- 
ment of Christ for the sin of the world. 

Let me briefly indicate several more definite truths 
which we may find in such study of the Cross. 

First, In our experience of forgiveness, and its 
moral necessities, we find that there must be peni- 
tence or confession on the part of the person who has 
done wrong. We may have the disposition to for- 
give, we may cherish the forgiving heart, but our 
disposition cannot become an act of forgiveness un- 
less there be some penitence for the wrong done, or 
confession of it on the part of the person who may 
have inflicted an injury upon us. The forgiving 
disposition will seek to win from another that ac- 
knowledgment ; the forgiving heart will be on the 
watch for opportunity to exercise forgiveness ; but in 



A Study of the Atonement. 217 

any true and perfect forgiveness of injury these two 
must always meet, the heart to forgive, and the will 
to confess a wrong. A broken friendship requires 
both for its restoration. The Christian duty is to 
cherish always the forgiving spirit. And the for- 
giving spirit will be quick to find occasion, and eager 
to make the most of opportunities for the exercise of 
forgiveness ; but as the seed requires the soil in which 
to grow and blossom, so the forgiving spirit requires 
humility and penitence in the mind of another for 
its perfect fruit of righteousness and peace. I have 
known earnest-hearted people who attempted to lift 
themselves into unnatural and impossible virtue, 
because they had falsely supposed that forgiveness 
must be an act of free grace on their part without 
any relation to the mind of the recipient of it, and 
consequently they have struggled from a sense of 
duty to throw themselves into a feeling which they 
could not maintain without violence to other moral 
elements of their natures. The sense of justice and 
right which demands confession of wrong and resti- 
tution is as human and as divine as the love which 
would forgive an offense, and accept another's will- 
ingness to make restitution. 

Secondly, Human forgiveness involves a painful 
knowledge of the wrong which has been inflicted. 
Forgiveness is always born of suffering. There must 
needs be pain and travail of soul in the birth of the 
forgiving spirit. You surely cannot forgive a friend 
if you liave never known and felt the hurt of his 
unkindness. Your welcome would not be the liand 
of forgiveness extended to him, if you have not real- 
ized tlic wrong wliicli lie may liavo done your friend- 



2i8 Christian Facts and Forces, 

ship. Some suffering for the injury received is an 
indispensable condition, or antecedent, of the exer- 
cise of forgiveness. 

Thirdly, We approach now another element in 
the history of human forgiveness, which is of deep 
moral significance ; viz., the suffering of the injured 
person must be so discovered to the wrong-doer that 
he can know it, and have some appreciation of it, in 
order that forgiveness may be granted and received, 
and its perfect work accomplished. 

But you will ask. Is it not the glory of the forgiv- 
ing spirit to hide its sense of hurt ? Do we not say, 
Forgive and forget ? Yet now you declare that the 
wound must be opened, and its pain made known, 
before there can be real forgiveness ? 

It is true that the sense of wrong, and the suffer- 
ing for it must be forgotten at the end of the act 
of forgiveness, and forever afterwards. The wound 
must not be kept always open. Christ suffered once 
for all. It is the glory of forgiveness not to remem- 
ber what was suffered before the friendship was 
restored. The forgiving heart keeps no scars. It 
were contrary to all charity to carry a grudge after 
hands have been shaken over an offense condoned. 
But I am not speaking of the results of forgiveness, — 
of its new grace and peace, — but rather of the condi- 
tions and necessities of forgiveness, or of the things in- 
dispensable to its exercise, when I say that there must 
needs be some revelation of the evil which has been 
done, and the hurt suffered, and the cost of the in- 
justice to the person who has been aggrieved. And 
the human forgiveness is never more than a polite 
fiction, if there is not in the hour of reconciliation 



A Study of the Atonement. 2 1 9 

this frank declaration and acknowledgment of the 
wrong done, and the suffering received from it. 
Some revelation on the part of the person forgiving 
of the suffering which has been inflicted by the sin 
against him, is just as necessary to perfect forgive- 
ness as is confession of that wrong on the part of the 
person who has committed it. Let either be wanting, 
and the reconciliation is only a truce, or a compro- 
mise, not a real and full forgiving and forgetting. 

Here is a man, for example, who in his youth was 
thrown rudely upon the world by some one who 
ought to have stood by him. In consequence he lost 
opportunity, was put upon a hard struggle for him- 
self, and received a wound upon his very soul, over 
which indeed the years of his growth have closed, 
and whose pain now in his better days for the most 
part he can forget. It is there, however, a remem- 
bered wrong, a sense of injustice which makes him 
quick to resent all other injustice in the world. His 
indignation for that sin against him is become a 
controlled passion, yet he knows that the fire of it is 
still alive at the heart of his character. Now how 
can that man forgive that wrong ? Let the sinner 
against him come to him, himself perhaps after many 
years in need, broken down, and grown conscious of 
the evil he had done. Now then the injured man 
has the opportunity to forgive ; yet the sight of that 
man who once wronged him, though a suppliant 
now and in distress, arouses the old indignation, sets 
again his soul aflame. He cannot lielp it. That 
sense of injustice in him makes him tremble with its 
passion. Yet ho would forgive as lie hopes to be 
forgiven. How can ho do it, and satisfy tluii up- 



2 20 Christian Facts a7id Forces. 

leaping justice in his own soul? How can he give 
his hand, and help his enemy, and forget the past, 
and at the same time keep the integrity of his own 
soul? 

My friends, we have not touched the divine prob- 
lem of atonement for the sin of the world unless we 
have honestly attempted this task of human forgive- 
ness, unless we have sounded for others, if not for 
ourselves, the moral depths of this problem of a per- 
fect human reconciliation. One thing in it seems 
to me clear as conscience. That wronged man can- 
not forgive his repentant enemy by treating his sin 
as though it had been nothing, by making light of 
it as though it had not cost him days of trouble, by 
hiding it in his good nature as though it were not 
an evil thing. Somehow that sense of injustice in 
his soul must find vent and burn itself out. Some- 
how that sense of wrong must manifest itself, and in 
some pure revelation of itself pass away. It cannot 
pass forever aw^ay except through revelation, as the 
fire expires through the flame. Yet in forgiveness 
justice must be a self-revealing flame, and not a 
consuming fire. Something like this has been the 
process of all genuine human reconciliations which 
I have observed. As an essential element of the 
reconciliation there was some revelation of pure jus- 
tice. There was no hiding of the wrong. On either 
side there was no belittling the injury. There was 
no trifling with it as though a sin were nothing. 
It was no thoughtless forgiveness out of mere good 
nature, in which the hearths deeper sense of right- 
eousness was not satisfied. When after conference, 
confession, and mutual revelations of mind and heart, 



A Study of the Atonement, 221 



forgiveness was bestowed and received, when the rec- 
onciliation was completed, then, if it were no super- 
ficial work, soon to be undone again, this observation 
I have always found to be true of it, that both parties 
were satisfied in it ; the whole moral nature of each 
person rested content in the good work accomplished ; 
nothing more was left to be remembered, explained 
or suffered. A personal satisfaction had been accom- 
plished which both accepted, and on the ground of 
that satisfaction the friendship was resumed, the old 
life buried from memory, and the new life begun. 
Anything less than that is not perfect reconciliation 
between friends. Anything short of that is not com- 
plete human forgiveness. Anything less thorough 
than that is no foundation for a new, abiding friend- 
ship. 

I have left myself time only to point to the way 
by which we may ascend from this our human ex- 
perience of forgiveness to the Cross of Christ, and 
the necessity for it in the love of God. In the Person 
of Christ, and through the life of Christ, God has 
identified himself with man, made himself as far as 
the Infinite One may, subject to the conditions of 
our human experience, and our human conscious- 
ness of sin and suffering. We are so bound up with 
one another that every day some innocent one suffers 
with the guilty. It is a part of the penalty of sin 
that in every human transgression some just one 
must needs suffer with tlic guilty. This is a natural 
necessity of our luiinan, or organic, relationship. 
And because we arc so bound up together in good 
and in evil, wo can bear one another's burdens, suller 
helpfully for another, and to a certain extent save 



2 22 Christian Facts and Forces, 

one another from the evil of the world. Now, ac- 
cording to these Gospels, God in Christ puts himself 
into this human relationship, and, as one with man, 
bears his burden and suffers under the sin of the 
world. The Father of spirits in his own eternal 
blessedness may not suffer wdth men ; but in Christ 
God has humbled himself to our consciousness of 
sin and death. In Christ the eternal love comes 
under the moral law of suffering, under which for- 
giveness may work its perfect work. 

More particularly, in the life and death of Christ 
these several elements which we have found belong- 
ing essentially to our experience of reconciliation 
with one another, have full exercise and scope. For 
Christ, identifying himself with our sinful conscious- 
ness, makes a perfect repentance for sin, and con^ 
fession of it unto the Father. Christ experiences our 
sin as sinful, and confesses it. And again, Christ 
realizes the cost of the sin of the world. His loneli- 
ness of spirit, the cruel misunderstandings of him by 
all men, his Gethsemane, his Cross, — all realize the 
cost and suffering of sin, and in view of such suffer- 
ings of the Son of man sin never can be regarded as 
a light and trifling thing. And still further, Christ 
reveals to the world what its sin has cost, and enables 
man who would be forgiven to appreciate it, and to 
acknowledge it. 

Hence as we come to the Father in the name of 
Christ, reading the condemnation of our sin in the 
life and the death of Christ, knowing how God has 
been aggrieved by it from the sufferings of Christ, 
and making our own his confession of it, there is 
no reason left in the nature of God why forgiveness 



A Study of the Atonement, 223 

should not have its perfect work, as under similar 
moral conditions there is no reason why we should 
not forgive one another. Thus, likev/ise, God can 
be satisfied in forgiving and forgetting our sins. AH 
the moral elements and conditions necessary to rec- 
onciliation, so far as we have experience of them, 
and the new sympathies and fresh hopes of restored 
friendship, are met and satisfied in the divine for- 
giveness through Jesus Christ. 

And we may be confident that a way of forgive- 
ness which satisfies God himself will be sufficient to 
meet any demands of his law, or necessities of his 
moral government. God himself is his government, 
and is greater than his government. The moral 
order of this universe is expressive of the ethical 
nature of God. And above all it is with God him- 
self, the righteous Father, that we have to do. Every- 
thing in the Gospel is personal. 

I have tried thus to draw out from our common 
human experience of forgiveness, and its moral 
necessities, some thoughts for the study of this most 
sacred and spiritually difficult of themes. It is, 
however, a true remark that a man can understand 
only what he has the beginnings of in himself. 
From the experience which we may have begun to 
have of forgiving each other's trespasses, we may 
derive some true knowledge of the divine forgive- 
ness of our sins. And the moral laws and moral 
necessities of the lower mirror '^the must needs 
suffer" of the higher. Yet if any of you find more 
readily comprehensible any of the older and more 
familiar methods of presenting the doctrine of tlie 
atonement, use those means which are helpful to 



2 24 Christian Facts and Forces, 

your thoughts, remembering always that they are 
your ways of access to the truth, and not the full 
measure of the truth of God^s atoning love in Christ. 

Beyond and above all our attempts at explaining, 
and our reasonings about, the death of Christ, let the 
Cross of Christ be to us God's sign upon our world 
of sin and sorrow. 

We do not begin to know the depths of the love 
of God. Our troubles only begin to disclose to us 
his infinite mercies. God's love is deeper than the 
skies, and all-encompassing ; our world in its sins, 
and with all its graves, lies in the infinite heaven of 
God's presence, and God's pure love. 



XVIII. 

THE GOSPEL A GIFT TO THE SENSES. 

**'Stsu8 5ait6 UTtto ^im, ^^ovxks, Inmsz t^ou f)a5t stm mc, t^ou 
f^KSt Mkhzi^i: hU>sstis kxz i^z^ ftat ^dihz not szzn, Knh jd Sabje IzUzhzl:}." 
— John xx. 29. 

The appearance and the words of the risen Lord to 
Thomas disclose the lower and the higher evidence 
which God offers of himself to the world in Jesus 
Christ. The Gospel has been happily called a gift 
of God to the human imagination ; it is also a gift 
of God to the human reason ; but besides this the 
Gospel is a gift of God to the senses of man. The 
risen Lord on his way to the heavenly city from 
Jerusalem, where he had been delivered to death, was 
willing to be seen of men, and consented that a 
doubter should touch his side. The appearances of 
Jesus after the resurrection were all gifts of God 
to the senses of men. In the whole life of Jesus 
before his death and resurrection this same divine 
condescension had been manifested. There had been 
a continual gift of God in his teaching to the reason 
and the spiritual imagination of the world ; and also, 
together with this higher revelation, running side by 
side with it, there had been in the visible presence 
on earth of the Son of man, and through liis miglity 
works, a revelation of God to the senses of men. I 
wish u})on this Easter morning to take for our text 
and our subject this lower evidence and lesser gift of 
God to man in the sensible revelation of God in 
15 225 



2 26 Christian Facts and Forces, 

Jesus' human form, and especiallj^ in his appearances 
to men after the resurrection. I design, however, only 
incidentally to discuss the value of these manifesta- 
tions of the risen Lord as evidence to our faith; my 
main object is to impress certain practical considera- 
tions which are to be derived from reflection upon 
this gift of God in Christ to our bodily senses. 

It is precisely this lower gift of God in the physical 
works and manifestations of Jesus both before and 
after his death, which we find it most difficult to re- 
ceive. Our age stumbles over the miracles of Jesus, 
and seeks to keep its connection with Christianity by 
idealising the Christ of the Gospel. The moral power 
of the life of Christ commands men's devotion. But 
the recorded gifts of God to the senses many find it 
difficult to receive. Thoughtful minds have some- 
times accepted the miracles of Christ because they 
first have believed in Christ himself. Since they have 
been compelled to believe in the divine originality 
and power of Jesus himself, they believe also in his 
works. Because they accept the higher evidence 
and revelation of God in the sphere of the moral 
and the spiritual, they will not deny the evidence 
and revelation of God in the sphere of the physical 
and the sensible. 

Sympathizing with this process of faith, I come 
back, however, to the gift of God through Christ's 
life and resurrection to the senses of man, with the 
conviction that it means more, and may be of more 
worth to us, than we often think. 

When we are pressed by the difficulties of conceiv- 
ing spiritual realities, we usually remind one another 
how partial and superficial is any knowledge of 



The Gospel a Gift to the Senses, 227 

things which we can possibly gain through our bod- 
ily senses. And this superficiality and partialness of 
our sensible knowledge, we reflect, is increasingly 
apparent the farther our sciences penetrate towards 
the inner principles and last laws of things. None 
will be more disposed to admit how little he knows, 
than the man who has gained the largest master}^ of 
any physical science. We can translate into our 
perceptions of sound, and color, and light, only a 
small part of the influences which we know pervade 
nature; and these perceptions represent only our 
present modes of personal contact, at a few points, 
with the infinite universe of God. Knowledge is 
always seeking to push beyond sense, and we have 
succeeded in naming and following many subtle 
essences and magnetic influences which no man hath 
seen, or can see. We may imagine, we cannot tell, 
what worlds within worlds, what spheres beyond 
spheres, might reveal their wonderful order and 
beauty to some added sense, or finer faculty of being, 
than we possess in our present embodiment. It is 
common and customary for us to remind ourselves 
of these limitations of sense when we would find 
room in nature for supernatural effects, or believe 
that Powers from the unseen world may have had 
their hours of manifestation in tlie history of this 
lower earth. All this is true, and may be profitably 
rem.cmbercd ; and such reflections arc sufficient, if 
we would answer simply the presumption of our sen- 
sible experience against the possibility of a miracle. 
We should need to know vastly more than any man 
can know of the regions of forces and phenomena 



2 28 Christian Facts and Forces. 

which lie just beyond the visible and beneath the 
tangible, before we should have reason to deny cred- 
ible evidence of some event in nature which lies be- 
yond all our experience of nature. 

This often necessary and profitable view of the 
meagreness and limitations of our sensible knowl- 
edge is not, however, the only view of the matter to 
be taken. I doubt if it be on the whole the largest 
and truest view we may gain. For throughout the 
Bible, and particularly in the Gospels, there is a cer- 
tain positiveness of appeal to the senses which im- 
presses us. God in the process of revelation has 
honored even these imperfect and limited senses of 
ours. There were voices of God sounding as audi- 
ble words to the prophets, and the angel of God^s 
presence appeared before Abraham's tent ; and this 
beginning of miracles did Jesus at Cana of Galilee ; 
and many mighty works followed the Lord on his 
way of divine revelation ; and after his death the 
stone was rolled away from before the sepulchre; 
and the disciples were glad when they mw the Lord. 
All the four Gospels show how carefully, with what 
painstaking thoughtfulness, in what convincing ways, 
Jesus after his resurrection, before his complete with- 
drawal into the glory of God's unseen presence, 
showed himself to the disciples, and gave the Gospel 
of the resurrection as a gift to their bodily senses, as 
well as to their reasons and their hearts. 

Moreover, the emblems of his life and death for 
us which Jesus with so much thoughtful provision 
bequeathed to his disciples, indicate, in every fresh 
presentation of them, how Christ condescended to 



The Gospel a Gift to the Senses. 229 

make his Gospel a gift even to our bodily senses. 
Whatever Christ took pains to do, must have real 
value and meaning for us, if we will receive it. 

Accordingly, I would remind you, first, that the 
appearances of the risen Lord to the senses of the 
disciples are fitted to impress upon us the worth of 
embodiment, and of the knowledge which is gained 
through the body. The fact of the resurrection, as 
it was witnessed even to the eyes and the ears of the 
disciples, — the doctrine of the resurrection, as it stands 
upon that testimony in the creed of the Church, — is 
a grand affirmation of the worth of the body to the 
soul, and a discovery to us of a divine law of life 
which provides suitable embodiment for the spirit 
through all its ascending power, and in its final per- 
fection. The Christian doctrine of the resurrection 
is a continual protest against any tendencies of 
thought, or habits of life, which would despise mat- 
ter, or regard a human body as a worthless thing, 
born only of corruption and destined only to cor- 
ruption. The gift of God to the senses in the life 
and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, honors the hu- 
man eye, and the human ear, and imparts a noble 
worth and a holy sanctity to the embodiment of the 
soul. It sanctifies for us and makes honorable the 
whole nature-side of our existence. And you will 
reflect how practically important it is that we should 
rightly receive and value this honor wliich the ap- 
pearance of Christ in the flesli both before and after 
his resurrection has placed upon the human body 
and its senses. The fact that Jesus rose bodily 
from the dead puts all sins against the body under 
greater condemnation, and it raises also to a Christian 



230 Christian Facts and Forces. 

duty not only the proper care of the body, but also 
the culture of the physical faculties, and the training 
of the soul for contact with divinity through its 
physical powers of apprehension. 

The distrust which good men have often felt of all 
knowledge, refreshment of soul, or enjoyment, which 
may come to us through the eye or the ear, or in the 
study of outward things, or by means of any of the 
influences of nature upon the soul through its mate- 
rial organism, is a failure to honor the body as God 
honored it when He took upon himself the form of 
man, when Christ worked in the realm of physical 
processes, and when he consented to be seen and to 
be touched by doubting disciple. The resurrection 
of Christ and its revelation of our continued embodi- 
ment in forms more celestial, discloses not only the 
worth of this body, but also the value of all acqui- 
sitions which we may now gain in these bodies and 
through their faculties of perception. Whatever you 
may learn through the training of any power of ob- 
servation, or in the perfection of any phj^sical faculty, 
is a clear gain of soul for its immortal existence. All 
physical culture and acquisition may have signifi- 
cance beyond itself. In a higher sense than the 
ancients knew we may learn to paint for eternity, 
or to sing for immortality, for all knowledge gained 
through these senses is true knowledge, and we shall 
not have to unlearn it, but rather to enlarge and 
perfect it, as after death and the resurrection we shall 
pass on in better embodiment to larger studies and 
finer knowledge of the creative thoughts of the Eter- 
nal. For us to despise the body, or to ignore the 
physical elements of life and knowledge, would be 



The Gospel a Gift to the Senses, 231 

to undervalue the significance of God's gift of his 
Son to the eyes of the disciples, and to the touch of 
Thomas. 

The pages of religious biography abound with 
illustrations of the misunderstanding or neglect of 
the Gospel of Christ to the senses. Religion has 
sometimes seemed afraid of nature, and has hesitated 
to enjoy the whole pure nature-side of faith. Thus 
the early Church was betrayed into a wasteful and 
cruel asceticism by the pagan error of thinking that 
God can be found only in the farthest spiritual 
realms, and that the life of man in nature is some- 
thing common and unclean. And that old false- 
hood has lingered and lurked in Christian thought 
until this day, to taint and to spoil not a few of the 
good gifts of God to men. A similar hard error in 
medieval theology drove a sharp distinction between 
nature and grace, and the Roman church divorced 
these two helpmeets of life which God has joined 
together, and which the Son of man did not put 
asunder. The result was to debase a considerable 
portion of man's natural activity as something be- 
neath moral attention ; and also, in consequence of 
this separation between nature and grace, the 
Church first neglected, then suspected, and then per- 
secuted, the natural sciences. The evil of this 
neglect and contempt for the natural has been felt 
not only in an enforced opposition between religion 
and science, but also in the loss from Christian 
thought and life of certain healthful and heli)ful 
elements of faith which God is always ready to im- 
part through natural influences, and to a sincere and 
humble love of nature. It would bo an interesting 



232 Christian Facts and Forces. 

study to inquire how far the reformed theology, with 
all its massive strength, lost grace and restfulness, 
and warm color, from that lack of appreciation of 
God's thought in nature which characterized gener- 
ally the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries. The sublime doctrine of God's high de- 
crees might have been presented with less forbidding 
sternness, and have seemed more habitable for men, 
had there been more love of nature, and of the least 
flower by the wayside, in the hearts of the Genevan 
reformers ; had travellers in those days not been 
wont to regard the Alps simply as obstacles to be 
crossed, and had they lingered in those valleys of 
loveliness guarded by white thrones of Deity. Cal- 
vinism, it has often been observed, lacked humanness 
and naturalness — a lack less felt in Martin Luther's 
sermons ; and Luther, we know, loved children, and 
his writings contain more reference to common 
natural things than the other reformers were wont 
to make. Jonathan Edwards, in one of his medita- 
tions, seemed at a loss to account for the spiritual 
influence which had led him to take delight in the 
stern doctrine of God's sovereignty, which in his 
earlier years had repelled and disheartened him. 
But when we read of his walks upon the banks of 
the Hudson, and of his communings with God in 
the quiet forests, whose shadows are shot through 
with the sunbeams, and where the rocks are covered 
with mosses, and nature finds place to hang her 
grasses and blue-bells in the clefts of the crags, it is 
not a far fancy to suppose that the influence of the 
Holy Spirit in the Gospel of nature to the senses of 
Edwards may have worked more subtly than he 



The Gospel a Gift to the Senses. 233 

knew in causing the higher and holiest revelations 
of the Divine glory to seem to him unspeakably 
attractive and lovable. 

Indeed with reference to the whole nature-side of re- 
ligion the words of the Lord Jesus are a constant sug- 
gestion and lesson to faith. I venture to say that more 
allusions to natural objects, to the lilies, the birds of 
the air, the vine, the trees, the grass, the white har- 
vest-fields, the abundant fruit, the waters of the lake, 
and the solitary places of the mountains, are to be 
found within the compass of these brief Gospels than 
may be discovered in whole tomes of Thomas 
Aquinas, or in the Institutes of Calvin. Jesus came 
to fulfill, not to destroy, and that men might have 
life abundantly. It is interesting to reflect that the 
Son of man lived with his disciples for the most part 
out of doors, under the open sky, in the fisher's boat, 
on the other side of the lake among the mountains, 
or walking day after day in the quiet ways between 
the towns and the villages of Galilee. Jesus trained 
his disciples for the most part in the country, by the 
lake, and in the wilderness ; he went up to the city 
to be crucified by the sins of men. It is not irrev- 
erent to think of Jesus as a true child of nature as 
he was the Son of man ; for both nature and human- 
ity come from God and are of God. The parables 
and the tcacliing of Jesus are pervaded by a divine 
naturalness, a simple truthfulness and healthfulness, 
which the Church too soon lost in its asceticism, and 
scholasticism forgot in its labored divinity, which 
the reformed theology was slow to regain, and which 
wc often miss in our artificialities and fictitious- 
ness of religious manners and life. Our Christian 



234 Christian Facts and Forces. 

thought needs to honor and to love the truth of 
God in nature, in the least things of God in the 
fields, and in our ever fresh discoveries of His 
works, in order that we may know better and keep 
truly the revelation of God in his grace. Everything 
unnatural is really un-Christian. " I should like to 
see before T die," so Thackeray wrote in one of his 
lately published letters, ^' and think of it daily more 
and more, the commencement of Jesus Christ's chris- 
tianism in the world. . . . We are taught to be 
ashamed of our best feelings all our life." 

There might have been less reason for this re- 
proach of the kindly humanist, had Christian 
thought always been possessed with a truer sense of 
the value which God has placed in the person of 
Christ, and by his resurrection, upon this human 
body and all the life of nature into which the spirit 
is born and baptized through its embodiment. 
Thackeray recalls a thought too often missing from 
our reasonings concerning foreknowledge and de- 
crees, when he writes in the same letter, " An angel 
glorified or a sparrow on a gutter are equally parts 
of His creation. The light upon all the saints in 
Heaven is just as much and no more God's work, as 
the sun which shall shine to-morrow upon this in- 
finitesimal speck of creation, and under which I shall 
read, please God, a letter from my kindest Lady and 
friend." Ruskin's remark is profoundly true that 
under similar circumstances he that has the most 
love of nature will have the most faith in God. Is 
it saying too much to afiirm that distrust of any 
natural law is unbelief, and denial of any scientific 
fact is atheism ? Any thought or habit which dis- 



The Gospel a Gift to the Senses, 235 

honors the body, or disdains the Gospel of God's 
truth to the senses of man, despises also the temple 
of God, and contemns the holy presence of the Crea- 
tor. " What ? " said an indignant Apostle, " know 
ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy 
Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye 
are not your own ? '' 

By putting such emphasis upon the natural even 
in the name of him who was crucified, do you 
mean, then, to make a religion of natural instinct ? 
to tell young men to follow their healthful natural 
impulses, and be saved ? Surely not that. Nature 
is not yet conscience. And there are fires of un- 
natural passion which sin has kindled in the veins 
of man. Sin has also become incarnate in this flesh, 
and must be crucified. But I mean that in the 
kingdom of grace nature is to be owned, consecrated, 
sanctified, blessed. I mean that the natural is for 
the spiritual, as well as the spiritual for the natural. 
I mean that each shall be perfected with the other 
in the kingdom of redemption. The gift of God to 
the senses in the bodily form, the miracles of healing, 
and the resurrection of Jesus, reveal the truth that 
the full and final life for the children of God will 
not be a solitary life of pure spirit, unembodied, and 
without participation in the beauty and the joy of 
all this *^ mighty world of sound and sense," but that 
it shall be the perfect reconciliation and immortal 
harmony of nature and spirit, of sense and soul, of 
our inward consciousness of thought and love, and 
all outward things. 

Yet there is one further question which thrusts 
itself upon us, the old question which in tiiuos past 



236 Christian Facts and Forces, 

has led men to shrink from this body, and from 
contact with matter as though it were a curse ; — the 
question how can this fire of sin in our veins be 
quenched, how can we be freed from temptation, 
sickness, pain, the darkening of the light of the spirit 
within us, and death, unless we escape wholly from 
imprisonment in this material element, and live as 
pure spirits before God ? And when you dwell upon 
the healthfulness of nature, and of delight of soul in 
it, and of its enlarging and softening influence upon 
our thoughts of the Father of all, are you not for- 
getting the evil of it, the dark side of it, " the moun- 
tain's gloom," as well as "the mountain's glory?" 
Do you remember how many there are to whom 
their bodies are life-long afflictions ? how many who 
carry about with them daily some thorn in the flesh? 
how many to whom embodiment means confinement 
for years in a single chamber of sickness ? and how 
for all of us nature under the curse of sin goes trem- 
bling down to the grave ? 

My friends, we can none of us forget these facts 
of sin, and death ; they are always before us. The 
shadow of them lies across our whole life from the 
cradle to the grave. Nevertheless, this evil aspect 
of things is but the half truth, a shadow thrown 
athwart life, not the whole revelation of God to us. 
Death is not the whole, or final truth of life. For a 
lifeless body seems to be not only a denial of man's 
free spirit, but a mockery of nature also. Was it for 
that, nature's noblest work was fashioned ? Was it 
for that, the most repulsive of all corruption, that 
her finest elements were mixed, her subtlest essences 
compounded, her power of organization carried to 



The Gospel a Gift to the Senses. 237 

its last degree of intricacy and complexity ? Truly, 
if a dead body were the end of embodiment, nature 
would be from the beginning to the end of her work 
one awful lie. If the dead body in the grave were 
the end of human embodiment, health is a mockery, 
delight in nature an irony, all our acquisition of 
knowledge of the world and the stars a hopeless 
folly, and that growth and culture of spirit which 
we gain through the training of eye or ear, or the 
skillful use of our hands, were a vain and profitless 
task. Ij the dead body be the end of human em- 
bodiment ! You say you find it difficult to conceive 
of the resurrection, and of bodies celestial ; but think 
how much more difficult it is to conceive that this 
body which dies is to be the end of all God's great 
thought of human embodiment, of all life of the 
immortal spirit in contact with nature, in perception 
of the harmonies of the spheres, in sight of the glory 
of God's infinite creation! It is against nature to 
imagine that a dead body must be an end — death a 
blank wall at the close — of God's way of embodi- 
ment. Were there no gift of the Gospels to the 
senses we still should find our life here in nature, 
and for nature, a prophetic life. It contains in itself 
the earnest expectation of the creature for the mani- 
festation of the sons of God. 

Thus we are led to the second great truth wliich 
was attested by the appearances of the risen Lord ; — 
our present bodies are preparatory and prophetic 
forms of embodiment. They are predictions of some- 
thing better to come. Tlicy are preparations for future 
embodiment. And the fact of tlie resurrection is a 
revelation to us of this complete truth, that (u)d has 



238 Christian Facts and Forces, 

made us to live in nature, and in happy contact with 
things natural, and also that in our present bodily 
existence we do but begin to be what we shall be 
when God's whole thought of us as embodied souls 
shall be at length fully developed, and confirmed in 
our eternal life. 

In this world we can take cognizance of the hu- 
man body only in its first growth and its imperfect 
fitness to our spiritual powers. Then, when it reaches 
its full stature, and its utmost draft of vitality upon 
the material forces of this earth is exhausted, it 
returns to earth, and we know not whence its ani- 
mating principle has fled. Jesus Christ, in those 
days between the morning when he rose from the 
dead, and the hour of his final disappearance, exem- 
plified and illustrated a still further continuation 
and development of the divine law of spiritual em- 
bodiment, for he discovered to the senses of his dis- 
ciples a risen body, which was still like the human 
form that they had known, and yet which was unlike 
this body of flesh ; it came and went ; it appeared 
and disappeared, as a form belonging to some higher 
order, and freed from the compulsions of corruptible 
matter. And towards the close of that interval of 
forty days the body of Jesus seemed to become even 
more spiritual, and less like the forms of this earth- 
liness, and we read of his last appearance to the 
eleven in Galilee upon a mountain, that when they 
saw him they worshipped, but some doubted. Already 
the embodiment of the Holy One, whom God would 
not suffer to see corruption, was being carried on and 
up into forms spiritual and celestial beyond the power 
of human eye to see, or human hand to touch ; and 



The Gospel a Gift to the Senses, 239 

when at last the earthly was laid aside, and the res- 
urrection was completed in the glorified humanity 
of Jesus, he ascended from them, and came back no 
more to be seen of men. The record of the Gospel 
to the senses was finished, and the dispensation of 
the Spirit followed according to His promise. 



XIX. 

THE LIMITS OF SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION. 

" 9v6i5 IS itobD i\t lf)ir& timt l!)at il^sus bas manifesto to tit Ijis- 
tqjlrs, aft^er t^at Jt kias lizm from tjje jtitali/' — ^John xxi. 14. 

*'%viii ii tamt to pass, txil^iU ftt iltsstlr tt^m, f)^ parttlr from tjm, 
anlj ixias ^arruiJ up into fttabm." — Luke xxiv. 51. 

I WISH to speak this morning concerning the mani- 
festation of divine and spiritual things. We often 
wish that they could become more apparent to men. 
We wonder why so much of the Gospel is left to 
faith, why more of God's glory is not given to sight. 
I think it may prove helpful to bring out into clear 
declaration some of these spiritual disappointments 
which shadow sometimes the faith of ordinary Chris- 
tians. We find it difficult to realize spiritual things. 
AYe look at death, and say one to another under our 
breath, No man knows. The thought will come un- 
bidden, since there is a God, as man must believe, 
why does God not impress himself with visible evi- 
dence upon us ? If there be a city of God, why do 
its inhabitants never appear, coming and going, 
through the atmosphere of this earth ? If the Lord 
be risen indeed, why should not each generation 
have its manifestation of his presence ? Why are we 
left to wonder, to reason, and to preach ? Why are 
men left at liberty to believe, or to eke out their lives 
as best they may in unbelief, when it would seem as 
though the Christ who showed himself to the disci- 

240 



Limits of Spiritual Manifestation. 241 

pies might manifest himself by visible signs from 
heaven, and God be revealed with demonstration to 
the senses so convincing that every man must see 
him, and cry out, What must I do to be saved ? 

I ask these questions because I think that we may 
obtain some partial answer to them, and because I 
believe that it is always the truest and wisest thing for 
us to take the secret questionings of our thoughts out 
into the open, and to look all around them, and to 
go on our way. 

The season also of the Church year after Easter 
and before the ascension and Pentecost, naturally 
suggests the inquiry. How did Jesus manifest him- 
self to the disciples, and why did he cease manifest- 
ing himself after forty days ? For this is the remark- 
able fact of history, according to these Gospels, that 
our Lord after the resurrection could appear to the 
disciples for a period of forty days apparently at his 
own will, and that then He ascended from them be- 
yond either his power, or his will to manifest him- 
self again sensibly to them; and since that brief 
season of his manifestation no man of all the doubt- 
ing or tried or sorrowful ones in this world has ever 
seen the Lord. 

There must be some reason for this. There must 
be some law in it. We cannot admit that anything 
in revelation is accidental. We cannot suppose tliat 
anything supernatural is capricious or lawless. There 
must be one divine order of this universe including 
both the supersensible and the sensible, the super- 
natural and the natural, and all the relations and 
interactions of the two. Jesus' manifestations of liini- 
sclf, tlicroforo, after his resurrection must have fol- 
ic 



242 Christian Facts and Forces. 

lowed some law of revelation, and his ceasing to 
show himself to the disciples must also be in accord- 
ance with some law of nature and of God. In other 
words there must have been some reasons why he 
could show himself to the disciples as he did during 
those forty days, and why afterwards he could not 
manifest himself as he has not done during these 
eighteen centuries. Perhaps if we could discover 
some hint, or follow a little ways some suggestion of 
this law of God's revelation and God's withdrawal 
of himself from us, we might find our faith greatly 
helped and strengthened. For this purpose I must 
ask thoughtful attention while I offer some ideas 
which seem to me tenable. 

Let us begin with the side of this subject which 
lies nearest at hand, and then follow it out in the 
direction of our present inquiry. 

Consider, first, how the spirit which is in man 
manifests itself, and what the limits of our spirits are 
in showing themselves. The life of man is a manifes- 
tation of his soul, yet it is a partial, imperfect manifes- 
tation of it, having certain fixed limits. All parents 
know how interesting — what a daily wonder, — is the 
process by which from infancy the mind of a child 
begins to disclose itself. Could we understand better 
that common daily miracle of the manifestation of 
mind in the growth of the new born child, we should 
solve many a hard question of the philosophers. But 
the one always impressive thing is, that in a body and 
through a life something unseen, imponderable, in 
its spiritual essence unknown, comes to manifesta- 
tion, discloses its personality, makes itself a felt and 
influential presence amid the facts and forces of this 



Limits of Spiritual Manifestatio7i. 243 

world. Every human life is a revelation of soul. 
Spirit is showing itself in every kindling eye, and 
through each living voice. But this is not all. The 
manifestation of spirit in body can be carried only 
to a certain extent. Soon a limit is reached which 
cannot be passed. Some faces may bring more spirit 
to manifestation than others ; some lives may be 
more tremulous with soul than others ; but all find 
in the body a limit, as well as a means, of manifes- 
tation. Earthly matter can receive and express only 
so much of spirit ; the overplus of soul, if any there 
be, remains unmaterialized, unexpressed. Indeed 
there is more every day in human thought than can 
ever get itself into definite speech ; there is more in 
human love than can be revealed by look or word or 
gift. The spirit which is in man is never fully mani- 
fested in these bodies, is never wholly revealed in 
things seen and present. There is more soul in 
humanity than has ever shown itself in history. 
The electricity which is seen in the flashes of the 
cloud is but a moment's visibility, at a single point, 
of the pervasive electric power with which this earth 
is charged. The history of humanity is overcharged 
with spirit. What has thus far come to manifesta- 
tion in art, in literature, in achievement, is but as the 
flash in the cloud. If common matter cannot possi- 
bly bring to manifestation all of the subtle magnetic 
forces with which it is pervaded, still less can tilings 
seen and tangible bring to revelation the Spirit and 
the Divinity with which the creation is vivified and 
inspired. 

I have been dwelling upon this thoiiglil because 
it is necessary to our purpose tliat wo should porcoivo 



244 Chris tia7i Facts and Fo7'ces. 

clearly this general law of spiritual revelation; and 
its lira its ; viz. : Our human spirits can manifest 
themselves in bodily forms, and be thus seen and 
known of men ; but this manifestation has certain 
fixed limits in the nature of matter beyond which it 
cannot possibly be carried. Xow it seems to me that 
in this simple general statement we have a very 
useful and helpful hint for our understanding of 
God's revelation of himself to us. The creation is a 
manifestation of something beyond sense and sound. 
Science speaks of all outward things as phenomena, 
things which do appear, not things which are. Na- 
ture is appearance of some Power behind nature, as 
a human face is expression of some spirit or char- 
acter beneath it. All outward nature is a suggestion 
of some intelligence. Hills and clouds, trees and 
flowers, all these endless combinations of elementary 
forms in nature, are symbols, types, means of ex- 
pression in what, with the simplest as well as pro- 
foundest science, we call the book of nature. Hence 
we speak of nature as a revelation of God. It is the 
oldest Testament, and to all honest, devout minds a 
sacred Scripture. So Kepler the astronomer read 
God's thoughts after him in the laws of the planetary 
motions. True science is a discovery of some higher 
order of things than seem to be. 

Then, besides this manifestation of God in nature, 
we read the record in human history of some higher 
providence than man's wisdom. Exactly as a hu- 
man life from youth to manhood, and in the achieve- 
ments of its maturity, brings the spirit of a man to 
revelation, so that by the life and its works we know 
the man, so human history taken as one whole, the 



Limits of Spiritual Manifestation, 245 

life of humanity in its progress and destiny, seems 
to discover to our knowledge some Power greater 
than man, and a Providence which imparts unity 
and continuity to man's history. And the particular 
line along which this revelation of God has been 
clearest, most impressive, and purest, has been in 
the historic line from Moses to Christ, and on in the 
spiritual power and progress of Christianity. 

In the life of Jesus Christ the revelation of God 
has reached its intensest, whitest light. All mani- 
festations of Spirit and of God seem to have culmi- 
nated in the person of Christ. Read the life of Christ 
even before his crucifixion and resurrection, and it 
seems at times as though this earth could not hold 
so much of divinity. When Jesus speaks some of 
those gloriously new words, when he is doing some 
of those wonderfully gracious acts, it seems as if the 
Divineness within him would consume its veil of 
flesh in the brightness of its manifestation. The 
transfiguration upon that holy mount is what might 
have been expected at any moment of the ministry 
of such a Being, so luminous with God. On the 
shore of the lake, on the mountain as he blesses the 
people, in the way up to Jerusalem with the disci- 
ples, in the Temple among the rulers, there is such 
a glory of God coming to expression in his teachings, 
such a wonder of divinity in his manner and his 
speech, such a fuUness of tlie presence of God in his 
person, that, the earthly and tlie human shine and 
burn, and almost give way and vanish in the tran- 
scendence of his Spirit. The transfiguration is tlie 
overphifi of Divinity, the unrevealablo glory of tlie 
Father in the Son of God, surcharging even his rai- 



246 Christian Pacts and Forces, 

ment, and transforming for a moment the face of 
Jesus and enveloping disciples in its overawing light. 

Surely we draw near the fullest human disclosure 
of God, and the last possible limits of divine revela- 
tion, when at length we see such a Man as Jesus 
had shown himself to be taking up his cross, accept- 
ing death, giving his life for the world. Love — the 
divinest thing in all the universe to be revealed — 
m.anifests its glory, the glory of the Father, in the 
ministry unto death of the Son of man. " Greater 
love hath no man than this, that a man lay down 
his life for his friends." How can God's love find 
intenser manifestation than in the Life of the Son 
of his love, who gave himself for us all ? 

Had the Gospels stopped with the account of the 
crucifixion, had God shown himself to us men only 
in the sinless life, and the sacrificial death of Jesus, 
and left only the record of his works, his teachings, 
and his Person more marvelous than all his works, 
for our faith and hope, still we should have had 
reason to believe in him as the Messiah, and believ- 
ing in him to live true, manly lives here in the hope 
of some still better life beyond. We might have 
said, even had the Gospels stopped at the Cross, 
" Truly this was the Son of God.'' We might have 
thought that God had manifested himself in Jesus 
to the utmost, and that we must needs go ourselves 
beyond death in order to become able to receive more 
spiritual discoveries of God's presence. 

But mercifully, condescendingly to our great hu- 
man need of signs and evidence of divinity, God in 
Christ, according to these Gospels, has carried the 
manifestation of the spiritual yet one moment and 



Limits of Spiritual Manifestation. 247 

degree further in the realm of the visible and sen- 
sible. We read, " This is now the third time that 
Jesus was manifested to the disciples, after that he 
was risen from the dead.'' There is an accuracy of 
detail, a perfectness of simplicity, and withal a re- 
serve and absence of excitement or exaggeration 
about this chapter of John's Gospel which greatly 
impresses us with its truthfulness. The art of the 
narrative is too perfect to be art. It is a mirror of 
reality. " Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fish- 
ing." There can be no doubt that Peter said that. The 
other disciples naturally say, " We also go with thee," 
and "they went forth, and entered into the boat; 
and that night they took nothing." They were per- 
haps too bewildered, purposeless, absent-minded men, 
to notice what they were doing that night on the 
lake, or to go and find where the great schools of 
fish might be breaking. It was the hour when the 
day was dawning ; and they saw a form, which they 
did not at first glance recognize, of one standing on 
the shore. He told them where to cast the net ; and 
it is true that John with his quick instinct of love 
divined instantly before the keen eyes of Peter had 
discerned that it was the Lord. 

And Peter threw himself into the water and struck 
out vigorously, Peter-like, for the shore; and the 
other disciples, — we can see it all, — did not stop to 
sweep the larger boat from its anchorage in upon 
the beach, but " came in the little boat (for they were 
not far from the land, but about two hundred cubits 
off), dragging tlie net full of fishes." The fire of 
coals, the fisli laid thereon, and broad, Simon Peter 
going up to draw the not to land, and counting thu 



248 Christian Facts and Forces. 

fishes, the exact number being a hundred and fifty 
and three, and all large ; — all these minute particu- 
lars and details of the sacred narrative are taken 
from memory, just as they must have happened ; 
there is the unconscious truthfulness of an eye-wit- 
ness in all this. 

But what of the divine manifestation ? There is 
no description given of Jesus' appearance although 
these little natural details of the scene are repro- 
duced so exactly. His words are repeated, Christlike 
words, like Him who spake as never man spake, 
words which are so Christlike that we know disciple 
never invented or could have imagined them ; but 
the manifestation of the presence of the risen Lord, 
how he came, and went, how he appeared, — there is 
no description attempted of that. It is simply 
affirmed and attested that it was the Lord, and that 
this was the third time he was manifested. We 
have the record of two other appearances of the 
risen Lord, and then the limit is reached, and the 
Lord has become too transcendent and divine to be 
seen again in bodily manifestation by his disci- 
ples. " And it came to pass, while he blessed them, 
he parted from them, and was carried up into 
heaven." Henceforth they shall not meet him in 
Galilee. They must follow him beyond death to 
see him again, and to be forever with the Lord. 

In the appearances of Jesus after death we have 
the manifestation of that which is spiritual and 
divine carried to its last degree of earthly possibility. 
These material conditions can reveal so much of the 
spiritual, and no more. Matter would break down 
under more spiritual pressure. Earthly elements 



Limits of Spiritual Manifestation, 249 

would dissolve in intenser radiance of divinity. 
There is a limit in the nature of the carbon point 
even for the power of electricity to show itself. The 
incandescence may be too great for the point of 
manifestation, and both disappear. There is a limit 
in the nature of the spirit beyond which it must fail 
to become apparent to the disciples' senses. In the 
appearances of Jesus after death the power of the 
spiritual to reveal itself seems to be nearing its 
utmost limit. One step further into the spiritual 
realm, and Jesus himself will become invisible. One 
more manifestation, and the limits of nature's power 
to show Divinity will be reached. One more gracious 
and commanding revelation to the eleven of the 
glory of the risen Lord, and the end of the whole 
history of Divine manifestations will be gained, the 
risen Lord will pass henceforth beyond the powers of 
our mortality to apprehend his presence, and He 
will be with us always in his Spirit. 

If you have followed me thus far along this line 
of thought, these further reflections will now be in 
place, and may prove clearing of doubts, and helpful 
to faith. 

First, We observe that everything in the life of 
Christ, — his nativity, his divine teachings, his mira- 
cles, his obedience unto death, his resurrection, his 
appearances after the resurrection, his ascension, — all 
are in accordance with a law of divine revelation. 
These arc not arbitrary, accidental, unaccountable 
events, contrary to experience, but they fall in with 
and constitute one law and history, one order and 
purpose of God's self-revelation even to the utter- 
most to us men. I will not delay to illustrate or 



250 Christian Facts and Forces. 

enforce this; I leave the suggestion of it to some 
doubting minds with the remark that when we fairly 
grasp the idea of a divine law of revelation running 
through the whole creation, and reaching its highest 
power in Jesus and the resurrection, we have seized 
upon a principle of reasonable faith which lifts us 
above a thousand diflficulties and objections. 

Secondly, It is comforting and assuring for any 
man of us to reflect that one reason why we have to 
believe so much, and can see so little, is simply be- 
cause there are such glorious and divine things to 
be revealed that they cannot possibly be manifested 
to our bodily senses. Too dazzling light would con- 
sume the eye uplifted to it. And I want to enforce 
this remark. 

A man is active, full of life and spirit, and he dies. 
We can see no more manifestation of him. He has 
gone from us. What is the reason that we cannot 
see him, or hear him, or meet him ? Why does he 
not come back and counsel us and comfort us ? We 
never needed him more. Ah ! my friends, — what is 
this law of spiritual manifestation and its necessary 
limits ? Have we not been remembering that spirit 
is greater than matter, soul diviner than body, and 
that spirit by its very essence and fineness of being 
may easily pass on wholly into the invisible ? may 
reach a point of love and life, of joy and purity, be- 
yond further contact with this mortality, and hence 
beyond possibility of our recognition? If any de- 
parted spirits still have power to enmesh themselves 
in gross matter, must they not be still earthly, sen- 
sual — gross demons — not pure, free spirits ? For if 
any pure spirits have power to come back and be 



Limits of Spiritual Manifestation, 251 

seen again on earth, none surely of all who have 
vanished into the unseen and holy would have more 
desire and more will to appear again, than would 
Christ. He knows all our need and grief. He loves 
his disciples to the end. Surely if any spirit can 
return, it will be the Lord. He first will show him- 
self, for his love is greatest. I will wait for his ap- 
pearing. I will listen to no others, until he comes. 
I must see the Lord first. I remember how the 
Christ lingered, as long as the risen Christ might, 
within the confines of this world, appearing for forty 
days to his disciples ; but at length even the Christ 
came to the end of his power of possible manifesta- 
tion to us men in these mortal bodies, on this side 
death. Christ in his risen and spiritual body be- 
came, at last, in the blessed ascent of his life to God, 
so remote from earthly temptation and touch of pain, 
so transcendent and glorified, that while the disci- 
ples were gazing up into heaven he vanished from 
them, not in the long centuries to come again until 
this world-age shall reach its appointed end, and 
these elements be dissolved in the brightness of the 
manifestation of the presence of the Lord. 

A man, we are observing, full of soul and spiritual 
power, more than life has measured, dies. We say, 
We do not know. One thing, however, we do know. 
If there is any truth in science, forces do not sud- 
denly end in nothingness. In some forms they are 
continued and conserved. We cannot conceive that 
spiritual and personal forces are exceptions to all 
that we know of force and its conservation. Some- 
how, somewhere, in some future possibilities and 
powers, that personal life-force goes on and o\\. The 



252 Chdstian Facts and Forces. 

only question is, In what form does it continue, or 
with what body does it come ? And the appearances 
of Jesus after death answer sufficiently for us that 
question. The manifestation of the risen Lord 
shows that personal force goes on after death as per- 
sonal force. The manifestation of Jesus to the dis- 
ciples leaves many questions unanswered which we 
are curious to ask, but it reveals personality continu- 
ing in a higher order of existence as personality. It 
was Jem^ who was manifested. The beloved disci- 
ple knew that it was his Lord who stood, while the 
day was breaking, upon the shore. The disciples are 
as sure that it is the Lord as they are certain that 
there were taken in the net a hundred and fifty and 
three great fishes — and no break to be found in any 
of the meshes of the net ! 

We do not really need to be assured of anything 
further. This is enough ; " It is the Lord !'' Master, it 
is thou ! Friend, it is thou ! Father, mother, hus- 
band, wife, child beloved, it is thou ! 

In the Christian knowledge of the life which is to 
be revealed, we can wait yet a little while for the 
manner and the time of its manifestation. It is only 
a question of manifestation. It is not a question of 
reality, or existence, but only a question of mani- 
festation of whatever is of the spirit and of God. This 
world manifests the divine somewhat, — all the spir- 
itual light that can work through the thick meshes 
of matter ; all of the divine presence that a material 
network of forces can be charged with ; all of the 
influences of angels that dull human brains can be 
made to feel ; all celestial sympathies and love this 
earth can know. But this little world cannot con- 



Limits of Spiritual Manifestation. 253 

tain it all. The fragrance cannot all be held in the 
flower's cup. Spirit transcends matter. There is 
more to be revealed. The manifestation is not over. 
The revelation of God has but just begun in this 
world, it will be continued in a better. " Howbeit 
that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is 
natural; then that which is spiritual. The first 
man is of the earth, earthy : the second man is of 
heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that 
are earthy : and as is the heavenly, such are they also 
that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of 
the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heav- 
enly.'' " When Christ, who is our life, shall be mani- 
fested, then shall ye also with him be manifested in 
glory." 



y 



XX. 

THE INTERDEPENDElSrCE OF ALL SAINTS. 

*'S.nh t'btst all, %Khin% Ik^ feitass iorne to ti^tm tl^rougl^ i^tix 
Cailf), xtmhzi:s not t|)e promijeif, (fScoIr j&abirtg probihI)r somt Ititn tiding 
fomcrrtinij us, tf)at apart from U5 ti^je^ s^oullr not lit maitrt :^zxiuV' 
— Hebrews xi. 39-40. 

Years ago rows of elms were planted on either side 
of the street upon which stands our church. Each 
elm was a separate, isolated thing. It was to grow as 
straight as it might from its own individual root. 
But when the trees had reached their full height, and 
each trunk had become strong and large, the branches 
of the separate elms began to touch in the upper air, 
and their symmetrical tops cast down upon these paths 
the friendly shadows of meeting boughs and leaves 
interwoven across the sky. And long ere this, too, I 
suppose, the single roots which struck down into the 
deeper soil have formed a living net-work in the 
common ground, and may share the same raindrops 
in their interlacing life. The growth of these elms 
is a parable of the growth of truths in human insti- 
tutions. Single ideas take root in history. A sepa- 
rate truth gains firm possession of some ground pre- 
pared for its reception. And opposite it another idea 
is implanted in history. Let the growth of either 
become stunted, and they will remain opposite and 
separate truths. But let each reach its full and per- 
fect development, leave both alone until they have 
time to grow into large symmetry, and they will 
254 



The Interdepe7idence of all Saints. 255 

begin to meet above, and to draw their ample life from 
the same springs below. And so it happens that 
while hardly two hundred and fifty years ago our 
forefathers left the whole calendar of the saints 
behind them and planted upon this spot a separate 
church, as though it were the year one of Christian 
history, and all things were to be made new, — to-day, 
this All Saints' day, a child of the Puritans, whose 
are the fathers, finds his thoughts easily intertwining 
with thoughts that have grown from a different 
stock, and we perceive that the separateness which 
was our fathers' strength has become, in its larger 
growth, graceful fellowship with other communions 
from which they stood apart. Here in a historic 
church, beneath which lie buried the bones of many 
a stalwart Puritan whose spirit we believe is still 
marching on abreast with the years of God, we now 
without fear of the superstitions from which our 
fathers fled, and in the exercise of the Christian lib- 
erty which they won, may observe Christmas^ and 
Easter, and Good Friday, and many a holy-day of 
the ancient Church. All Saints' day was first com- 
memorated in the Eastern Church whose noble wit- 
nesses and martyrs were many times more in num- 
ber than the days of the year ; afterwards, and at a 
different season, it became a festival in the Western 
Church; and many pious and reverent believers, 
in several Protestant communions, at this harvest 
time of the year, delight to keep this day sacred to 
the thought and the memory of that great multitude 
whom no man can number, of all nations, anil kin- 
dreds, and tongues, — the souls of all saints, which 



256 Christian Facts and Forces. 

are the Lord's harvest from the ages of our human 
history. 

In order that we also may enter into the associa- 
tions of All Saints' day, let us suffer our thoughts to 
take the hint and to run gladly forth in the direction 
which is indicated by the Scripture chosen for our 
text : " They apart from us should not be made per- 
fect." The Apostle had been speaking of the saints 
of the Old Testament. He had been building, in 
that famous chapter, the triumphal arch of Old Test- 
ament history. The names of the world's spiritual 
conquerors are written there. But at the close of 
this triumphal commemoration you cannot fail to 
notice the unexpected turn of the text. The con- 
clusion towards which this whole chapter of faith's 
heroism seems to move would be an ascription of 
our indebtedness to these valiant servants of the 
Lord who " have made it a world for us." Without 
them, the writer of this sacred history would natu- 
rally have said. Without them we are not made per- 
fect. But instead he said, " That apart from us they 
should not be made perfect." 

The generations of the past were not made per- 
fect without the generation to which Christ's Apostle 
spoke. The last living generation was in some way 
necessary for the perfection of all the generations 
which had been upon the earth. We hardly tran- 
scend the text, we do but follow the inspired word 
out to its larger revelation, when we say. Each 
Christian generation is necessary to all before ; the 
last saint belongs in some measure to the first ; the 
better thing of each age is for all who have lived and 



The Interdependence of all Saints. 257 

died ; not only is it true that we inherit the lives of 
the saints, but they also are to inherit ours ; we are 
for them as well as they for us ; neither they nor we 
are to be made perfect apart ; the last century of 
human history shall crown all the centuries; the 
consummation of the world is the perfection together 
of all the saints. 

This is hardly our customary thought of the saints. 
We think of them as passed beyond all participation 
in this world's history, withdrawn from its trials and 
having no concern henceforth in its warfare and vic- 
tories; made perfect in their own pure hearts, and 
their lives elsewhere no more bound up with this 
world's destiny. We remember with grateful love 
what they have been to us in the years gone by ; we 
remind one another in our public places of our com- 
mon inheritance in the lives of good men ; we build 
monuments to the memory of the brave who died 
for their country; we draw inspiration for youth 
from the illumined historic page, and the spirit of 
the martyrs blends still with all sacrifice of love. 
But while we remember these worthy and sainted 
ones, we should not forget that we too are to be for 
them, as they have been for us ; that Moses and Elias 
are not perfect apart from Peter and John in the pres- 
ence of the Christ of the ages ; that James waits for 
Irenseus, and Paul for Luther; that Augustine and 
Calvin are not perfect without Edwards and Mau- 
rice; that these all wait for some better tiling which 
God hath provided concerning us ; tliat we too are 
dependent upon our cliildron, and our chikhvn's 
children, for the fullness of our lives, and the com- 
pletion of our work ; that all the saints from all the 

17 



258 Christian Facts and Forces. 

ages are for one another ; that not in solitary glory 
of martyrdom, nor in singular beauty of grace, nor 
yet in separate happiness, nor upon any throne apart, 
is the saint of God to be made perfect ; but, in the 
mutual triumphs and in the living interdependencies 
of the Lord Christ's kingdom, all are to be made 
perfect together when the city of God shall come. 
Let us dwell now upon this truth awhile. 

Let it be known -that this truth of the mutual de- 
pendence of the saints of all ages is a Biblical con- 
ception — one which we ought not to lose. 

If you contemplate, for example, any sacred char- 
acter from the Old Testament, you will observe that 
such character is never held apart either from the 
men of God who went before it, or from the servants 
of the Lord who are to follow after it. Each of these 
characters is put in the Bible into relation with all 
before and all after it — as a link in a chain ; all per- 
sonages that carry on God's gracious revelation, are 
as links in one continuous chain, — and both ends 
of this unbroken chain of sacred history, running 
through the ages, with its many links of lives inter- 
locked in one purpose of redemption, are bound to 
the throne of God, — the beginning of it by the first 
divine act of creation, and the final end of all in the 
glory of the Son of man at the right hand of the 
majesty on high. 

The interdependence of all saints, the living and 
the dead, and those who are to be, appears in certain 
events in the life of Christ, and may be inferred also 
from certain inspired hints in the apostolic writings. 
It is clear from the narrative of the transfiguration, 
that Moses and Elias had not been cut off by death 



The Interdependence of all Saints. 259 

from personal interest and anticipation in the pro- 
gress of God's kingdom on earth. Moses upon the 
Holy Mount was as real a figure in our human his- 
tory as he was upon Mount Nebo, when he stood 
looking toward the promised land. And Elias was 
still as really a character of our human history, when 
he became visible in Christ's transfigured presence, 
as he was when he waited for the appearance of the 
cloud which should bring heaven's blessing to the 
parched fields of Israel. Whatever may have been 
their work, or rest, in their intermediate life, Moses 
and Elias certainly were not removed by death be- 
yond personal share and part in the ministry of 
our Lord, and personal sympathy and hope in the 
progress and triumph of redeeming love upon this 
earth. What was done here upon a place called 
Golgotha, was to be done for them also there in that 
place called Paradise. And it is deeply significant 
and suggestive that the apostle Peter who was one 
of the two to witness this revealed intimacy of the 
saints of the Old and the New, and to see upon the 
Holy Mount this close contiguity of two worlds, is 
the same apostle who has dropped in his epistle quite 
incidentally, and as a matter of course, that word 
which we have practically left out of our Protestant 
Bibles concerning Christ's preaching to the spirits in 
prison, and again concerning the preaching to those 
that are dead. I am drawing no doubtful inferences, 
I am indulging in no new speculations, I am simply 
asserting what fidelity to the Scriptures conii>els us 
to believe, and what the early church found room 
for in its ampler creed, when I say that Christ de- 
scended into Hades, and that he did the work 



26o Christian Facts and Forces. 

appointed of the Father for him in that hour there 
among the dead, and that the fact of Christ's descent 
into Hades, upon the very day between his death 
and his resurrection for us, reveals some near rela- 
tion between the two worlds, this earth and Hades. 
The Lord's life here, and the life of the dead there, 
were and are correlated ; the history of the two 
spheres, the realm of the dead, and the kingdom of 
God on earth, were and are in some way connected 
and parallel histories ; the two lands are contiguous, 
and One Lord passes back and forth across their 
boundary-line, to-day in the body, to-morrow in the 
spirit, and the third day risen again, and seen by the 
disciples; and he has the same administration of 
perfect justice and grace in both worlds. This much 
is not theory, but Biblical fact. We may deny 
utterly the fact of this revelation, if we will ; but if 
we believe the Scripture, we should accept this fact 
of the dependence of both worlds upon Christ, and 
his activity in both, as it has been revealed to us, 
and we ought not to dwarf any inspired Scripture, to 
the low stature of some human system of theology, 
or seek to crush its vaster truth into any of our little 
theories of God's government. 

These two facts at which we have just glanced, 
namely the part taken by Moses and Elias upon the 
mount of transfiguration, and the fact of Christ's de- 
scent into Hades and his activity there in the Spirit, 
while his body lay in the tomb awaiting the resur- 
rection, are sufficient to show that the two realms — 
the one where the dead are living, and this other 
where we are dying — are not so far apart, are not 
altogether separate realms in God's government and 



The Interdependence of all Saints. 261 

purpose, have correlations more intimate and vital 
than we know; " that they apart from us should not 
be made perfect." 

This truth of the mutual life and interdependence 
of all saints appears further from the whole manner 
and tendency of the New Testament in its treatment 
of the subject of death. There is hardly anything 
more contrary to Scripture than is our common ex- 
aggeration of the importance of death. Do we not 
remember how Jesus seemed always to be putting 
death into the background as a very secondary and 
even incidental thing in the history of a soul which 
has attained the true, the eternal life? He minimized 
death when he called it a sleep. We magnify it 
when we call it destiny. The Apostles, catching 
Jesus' diviner tone, called sin death, and love life. 
Death in the Apostolic speech was turned into a 
metaphor; it served to illustrate something far greater 
and more important than itself. Conversion to them 
was the great change ; to die may be the greatest 
event which can happen to a man ; but to die is one 
of the least important things which a man does; 
to repent of sin, to surrender to God, to live unto 
Christ, — this is the great thing for a man to do. We 
think of death as a vast gulf between friends ; as a 
great barrier between hearts that would go on loving 
and being loved forever; as a wall of adamant sud- 
denly reared by a divine decree between mother and 
child, husband and wife; and with the years the 
great silence widens between men and women wlio 
were friends. But when one wlio liad been taught 
of Jesus has occasion to refer to deatli, he thinks not 
of chasm or adamantine wall, but of tho veil of the 



262 Christian Facts and Forces. 

temple — the mere veil between the holy, and the 
holiest place. "And this hope," he said, "enters 
within the veil." 

" No adamant between us uprears its rocky screen ; 
A veil before us only ;— thou in the light serene. 
That veil 'twixt earth and heaven a breath might waft aside ; 
We breathe one air, beloved, we foUow one dear guide : 
Passed in to open vision, out of our mists and rain. 
Thou seest how sorrow blossoms ; how peace is won from pain." 

Let this truth that all saints are for one another 
and are to be made perfect together, stand out in its 
Biblical simplicity before our faith, unencumbered 
by any attempts of ours to imagine the modes of this 
mutual dependence of the living and the dead. 

Imagination has indeed its high and holy task in 
aid of faith ; nor do we fail to feel, even in this life, 
touches upon our spirits as of unseen powers, and 
influences upon our hearts whose coming and going 
no man knows. There may be more points on earth 
for celestial magnetisms to attract than any science 
can determine. The stars of heaven are distant, we 
know not how far ; and yet they are present in the 
motions of this earth, we know not how much. The 
moon to-night will not be exactly in the spot where 
our science of the forces balanced in her motions 
would bid her rise and walk across our sky; and 
our astronomy, doubting not the ancient order of 
the heavens, must yet make room in its perfect cal- 
culations for the observed fact of some uncomputed 
celestial influence. There are heavenly facts but 
half understood in commonest human experience. 
What sweet influences they who have gone from us 
still have over us, we cannot tell; what magnetic 



The Interdependence of all Saints. 263 

lines reaching down to human hearts, Moses and 
Elias, the prophets, and the saints from our own 
homes may touch from celestial places, passes our 
knowledge ; but this we do know, this at least can- 
not be gainsaid, that in this earthly life, after every 
analysis we may make of it, there is found a sacred 
residuum of spiritual experience, which fails under 
every test to be reduced wholly to common earthly 
elements. 

Without allowing ourselves to be betrayed into 
curious and possibly very misleading imaginations 
of the methods and the manner of the sympathies 
of all saints, we may take great comfort in the fact 
of their mutuality and interdependence of existence 
and destiny, as this fact of the unity of their lives 
and ours has been partially disclosed in the Scrip- 
tures. Does it not revive us like a breath of the 
Spirit to know this truth of All Saints' day, that we 
all shall be made perfect together, and none apart ; 
that in God's plan our lives and theirs, whom for a 
little while we do not see, have been interwoven, and 
still run on interweaving their threads and colors ; 
that still we are living for them, and they for us in 
the one kingdom of our Lord; that they in their rest, 
or in their new activities, are resting, or are minis- 
tering, not apart from us, as we in our toils and in 
our dreams still are living and still are loving not 
without them; that whatever in higher spheres is 
transpiring in their lives has also its worth yet to be 
revealed for us, as our thought and love mny liavo 
growing worth for them; that whether in some 
silence of divine light round about them they are 
becoming holy and radiant with perfect love in their 



264 Christian Facts and Forces. 

own pure hearts, or whether along some way of God 
they are now made strong to run with some glad 
tidings, or whether with the Lord Christ they be 
permitted with their dear hands to give some added 
grace and human, homelike touch to the places in 
his many mansions which He has gone to prepare 
for us, — still, still, they think, they fly, they rest, they 
love, not apart from us, and in them and their large 
happiness the great God thinks also of us; that with- 
out us they may not be made perfect in that final 
unspeakable perfection of all the saints in the last 
day. And we too — herein is a comfort which we 
must not suffer any man to take from us — we also 
are living for them ; as the early Church before its 
Latin corruption did not hesitate in its childlike faith 
to express in its prayers for the sainted dead this 
most Christian sense of the mutuality of the believers' 
lives both here and there. We also are living for 
our fathers, for our friends who have passed before 
us, for all the saints, if indeed we are living truly 
and unselfishly ; if we are ripening for their com- 
panionships, and becoming strong and pure for celes- 
tial thoughts and deeds in the ages of ages. 

Men and brethren ; you may turn if you will in the 
scepticism of the understanding from this blessed 
hope, and rend if you can from your hearts all faith 
in immortality. You may believe, if indeed in any 
worthy and unselfish moment you can, that at death 
we living souls fall into the jaws of eternal darkness; 
but if we trust as little children the voice of God in 
our personal consciousness of life, if we are Christians 
and believe in the Gospel of the resurrection, then 
why do we belie this hope ? why do we belittle and 



The Interdependence of all Saints. 265 

dwarf this mighty faith by our comfortless griefs, by 
our slowness of heart to understand that we are living 
with all saints? that in fresh sympathies of heart, 
and active, joyous interest in each new day of the 
Son of man, we are living most truly with all saints, 
living best and with most vital hearts with our own 
dear saints above, hastening with them the day of 
the Lord, and becoming ourselves meet to be par- 
takers with them in the final beatitudes of God's 
grace? 

Another lesson from this truth of All Saints' day 
lies close at hand. I shall have spoken in vain if 
you do not perceive once more the truth that to be a 
Christian and to be saved is not merely to become 
perfect for one's self, and to carry off a crown of glory 
at the judgment day. It is rather to come to the end 
of self, and to begin to be a member of a blessed soci- 
ety of spirits. No man is to be saved apart from all 
the saints. God's law of salvation is a social law, 
the law of a redeemed society. The social life of the 
church, therefore, the social unity of the church, is 
not an adjunct or accessory of the divine constitution 
of the church ; it is an element of the divine idea of 
the church ; it belongs to its essential Christianity. 
And hence it follows that churches are not revived, 
and do not grow, if this divine idea of the covenant 
of believers and the household of faith, is lost sight 
of, or practically ignored. 

Once more, let the lesson come liomo to us from 
what I have been trying to say, tliat individually wo 
cannot grow in grace apart from all saints, 'i'liero 
is a beautiful Scripture, the most iuiporlaiit rlauso of 



266 ChHstian Facts and Forces. 

which we are too apt to hurry over as we read it : 
" That ye may be able to comprehend with all saints 
what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and 
height ; and to know the love of Christ, which pass- 
eth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the 
fullness of God." The condition of knowledge of the 
love of Christ is that we find it and share it with all 
saints. Yet this is just what many of us sometimes 
are not willing to do. We would know the love of 
Christ with our favorite saints. With all saints, said 
Paul. You must keep All Saints' day if you would 
know the length and breadth of the love of Christ. 
Our theologies must be learned not of our New Eng- 
land divines only, but of all saints. We shall never 
comprehend the love of Christ, if we sit barred and 
separated from all saints within our own pews. Pew 
doors are contrary to Scripture, if they do not open 
easily to all saints. And still less can any cultured 
man hope to know God in the capacious solitude of 
his own intellect. It w^as Paul, to whom were given 
personal revelations above measure, who felt the need 
of learning the love of Christ with all the saints. 
Yes, those unknoTvni saints, those humble saints, those 
poor saints, untaught, unlearned, are to be your fel- 
low-helpers to the truth. There are faces among 
them — I have seen some such — in whose light we 
may learn more of the secret of the Lord than from 
any books. Oh, when will we understand that our 
Christ is the universal Christ? All men come to 
him. All history is in him. " Behold, the man ! " 
" Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the 
sin of the world!" Only in universal sympathies 
can we know the universal Christ. We must come 



The Interdependence of all Saints, 267 



out of ourselves, we must live more with others and 
in others, we must make All Saints' days in our 
homes and in our hearts, if we would be learners 
of the universal Christ, and enter into all the fullness 
of God. 

And finally, for I must close with the half not 
uttered, let me remind you that to join the Church is 
to begin to keep All Saints' day before the Lord. It 
is for any of you to confess that apart from us you 
cannot be made perfect. It is to act upon your belief 
in the communion of the saints. It is to come with 
us and to confess your faith in the Saviour of the 
world in that simplest form of words, the Apostles' 
Creed, which more than any other is the creed of the 
holy catholic Church universal, and henceforth to 
seek no more alone, and apart, but with all saints to 
know that divine love which passeth knowledge. 



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